Increasing Asian American women's research participation: the Asian grocery store-based cancer education program.
BACKGROUND
Research study participants with diverse characteristics produce the most generalizable outcomes, but recruiting heterogeneous samples is difficult.


METHODS
This pilot study tests whether Asian women (N=1079) with diverse language proficiencies, who were personally recruited to one study by a linguistically and culturally aligned recruiter, would enroll in another study with a single mailed invitation in English.


RESULTS
The 134 participants in the second study represented 17.2% of those 779 women who had completed both baseline and follow-up surveys in the original study, making this characteristic the best predictor of future study participation. Of the 303 women in the first study who said they would be willing to participate in future studies, 17% (51) participated in the second study. Of the 733 who said they would not be willing to participate in future studies, 11% (83) participated. However, given the larger size of this group, researchers may recruit a greater absolute number of participants from it. While this rate of participation was less than the 25% rate achieved in the first study, the second study's single, mailed English language invitation was likely a barrier to participation.


CONCLUSIONS
Securing IRB-approval to invite prior study participants from traditionally underrepresented communities to a new study is a strategy investigators can use to increase the diversity of their samples. Further research is warranted to determine whether Asian women who have participated in one study might also become effective recruiters for future studies.
Rebecca and John Moores UCSD Cancer Center, 3855 Health Sciences Drive #0850, La Jolla, CA 92093-0850, USA. gsadler@ucsd.edu <gsadler@ucsd.edu>
Georgia Robins
GR
Sadler
Celine M
CM
Ko
Mitsuko
M
Takahashi
Christy R
CR
Ching
Irene
I
Lee
Gin C
GC
Chuang
Kathy K
KK
Lee
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001213:Asian; D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000517:prevention & control; D002140:California; D003132:Commerce; D003256:Community Participation / Q000379:methods* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D005260:Female; D006266:Health Education; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006306:Health Surveys; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008875:Middle Aged; D018579:Patient Selection; D010865:Pilot Projects; D055815:Young Adult