Participants' preference for type of leaflet used to feed back the results of a randomised trial: a survey.
BACKGROUND
Hundreds of thousands of volunteers take part in medical research, but many will never hear from researchers about what the study revealed. There is a growing demand for the results of randomised trials to be fed back to research participants both for ethical research practice and for ensuring their co-operation in a trial. This study aims to determine participants' preferences for type of leaflet (short versus long) used to summarise the findings of a randomised trial; and to test whether certain characteristics explained participants' preferences.


METHODS
553 participants in a randomised trial about General Practitioners' access to Magnetic Resonance Imaging for patients presenting with suspected internal derangement of the knee were asked in the final follow-up questionnaire whether they would like to be fed back the results of the trial. Participants who agreed to this were included in a postal questionnaire survey asking about their preference, if any, between a short and a long leaflet and what it was about the leaflet that they preferred. Multinomial logistic regression was used to test whether certain demographics of responding participants along with treatment group explained whether a participant had a preference for type of leaflet or no preference.


RESULTS
Of the participants who returned the final follow-up questionnaire, 416 (88%) agreed to receive the results of the trial. Subsequently 132 (32%) participants responded to the survey. Most participants preferred the longer leaflet (55%) and the main reasons for this were the use of technical information (94%) and diagrams (89%). There was weak evidence to suggest that gender might explain whether participants have a preference for type of leaflet or not (P = 0.084).


CONCLUSIONS
Trial participants want to receive feed back about the results and appear to prefer a longer leaflet. Males and females might require information to be communicated to them differently and should be the focus of further research.


BACKGROUND
The trial is registered with http://www.isrctn.org/ and ID is ISRCTN76616358.
Department of Health Sciences, Seebohm Rowntree Building, University of York, Heslington, York YO10 5DD, UK. stephen.brealey@york.ac.uk
Stephen
S
Brealey
Lazaros
L
Andronis
Laura
L
Dennis
Christine
C
Atwell
Stirling
S
Bryan
Simon
S
Coulton
Helen
H
Cox
Ben
B
Cross
Fiona
F
Fylan
Andrew
A
Garratt
Fiona
F
Gilbert
Maureen
M
Gillan
Maggie
M
Hendry
Kerenza
K
Hood
Helen
H
Houston
David
D
King
Veronica
V
Morton
Michael
M
Robling
Ian
I
Russell
Clare
C
Wilkinson
D000328:Adult; D005246:Feedback; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D033181:Information Dissemination; D016013:Likelihood Functions; D016015:Logistic Models; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D057240:Patient Preference; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires