title: How do you recruit and retain a prebirth cohort? Lessons learnt from growing up in New Zealand.
abstract: Growing Up in New Zealand, a longitudinal study following nearly 7,000 children, has faced some unique challenges in identifying, enrolling, and retaining a large and diverse antenatal cohort. Identification of a study region with population demographics that enabled enrollment of an appropriately diverse sample was required as was intensive community and participant engagement in order to promote the study. Complementary methods used included direct engagement with prospective participants and the community and indirect engagement via media. Thus far, retention rates above 95% have been achieved by maintaining a multimethod approach that includes valuing participants and building trusting relationships, strong brand recognition, community engagement, maintenance of participant contact and location records, ensuring high-quality interactions between the participants and the study, pretesting measures and methods prior to the main cohort, and using participant feedback to inform the measures and methods used in future waves of data collection.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Longitudinal Research-He Ara ki Mua and Growing Up in New Zealand, The University of Auckland.
authors.forename: Susan M B
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Morton
authors.affiliation: Centre for Longitudinal Research-He Ara ki Mua, Growing Up in New Zealand and Department of Paediatrics, The University of Auckland cc.grant@auckland.ac.nz.
authors.forename: Cameron C
authors.initials: CC
authors.lastname: Grant
authors.affiliation: Centre for Longitudinal Research-He Ara ki Mua and Growing Up in New Zealand, The University of Auckland.
authors.forename: Polly E Atatoa
authors.initials: PE
authors.lastname: Carr
authors.affiliation: Growing Up in New Zealand and School of Population Health, The University of Auckland.
authors.forename: Elizabeth M
authors.initials: EM
authors.lastname: Robinson
authors.affiliation: Growing Up in New Zealand and School of Population Health, The University of Auckland.
authors.forename: Jennifer M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Kinloch
authors.affiliation: Growing Up in New Zealand, The University of Auckland.
authors.forename: Courtney J
authors.initials: CJ
authors.lastname: Fleming
authors.affiliation: Growing Up in New Zealand, The University of Auckland.
authors.forename: Te Kani R
authors.initials: TK
authors.lastname: Kingi
authors.affiliation: Growing Up in New Zealand, The University of Auckland.
authors.forename: Lana M
authors.initials: LM
authors.lastname: Perese
authors.affiliation: Growing Up in New Zealand, The University of Auckland.
authors.forename: Renee
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Liang
mesh_terms: D005260:Female; D006803:Human Development; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D009520:New Zealand; D018579:Patient Selection; D011247:Pregnancy
keywords: New Zealand; child health; cohort; longitudinal studies; recruitment; retention