title: Efficiency of using community organisations as catalysts for recruitment to continence promotion trials.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  A major challenge for determining the effectiveness of community-based continence promotion campaigns is recruitment of a representative sample of incontinent participants who have not previously sought care.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To evaluate the efficiency of engaging community organisations as catalysts for recruitment of community-dwelling older women with incontinence to the 'Continence across Continents' randomised controlled trial.
  
  
  METHODS
  Seniors' and women's community-based organisations throughout the United Kingdom were solicited by telephone or email to assist recruitment for an open-label cluster randomised controlled trial testing three experimental continence promotion interventions and a control intervention for incontinent older women. Women aged 60 years and older who experienced at least weekly urinary incontinence and who had never sought treatment were eligible to participate. The response rate of the organisations and enrolment rate of eligible participants attending the continence promotion workshops were recorded. Differences in recruitment efficiency by intervention group were ascertained using analysis of variance statistics.
  
  
  RESULTS
  We contacted 408 community organisations over a 1-year period. Seventy organisations (17%) agreed to host a workshop, 249 (61%) did not provide a response, and 89 (22%) refused. Workshops were administered in a group format to 61 organisations (15%); 667 women attended, 583 (87%) submitted the screening questionnaire, and 437 (66%) met eligibility criteria for inclusion. A total of 192 women consented to participate in the trial, yielding a 44% recruitment efficiency among workshop attendees known to be eligible, with no significant difference in enrolment rates between groups. However, the mean participant recruitment rate per number of attendees at each workshop was only 29%, varying substantially between groups from 19% to 37%, with the lowest rate observed for the control group. The mean annual recruitment rate expressed as the number of enrolled participants per community organisation contacted was 0.5.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Reasons for women's non-response were not collected. The findings may be country specific.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The recruitment rate for a continence promotion trial among older women known to be eligible and attending workshops hosted by local community organisations was high (44%). Strategies are needed to bolster community organisations' involvement in health promotion trials in general and for continence issues in particular.
authors.affiliation: Department of Nursing, Glasgow Caledonian University, Glasgow, UK.
authors.forename: Rona
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Agnew
authors.forename: Eleanor
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: van den Heuvel
authors.forename: Cara
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Tannenbaum
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D003256:Community Participation / Q000379:methods*; D003159:Community-Institutional Relations; D005260:Female; D006293:Health Promotion / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D018579:Patient Selection; D016032:Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic; D006113:United Kingdom; D014549:Urinary Incontinence / Q000517:prevention & control*