Recruiting and motivating black subjects to complete a lengthy survey in a large cohort study: an exploration of different strategies.
BACKGROUND
The effectiveness of multiple innovative recruitment strategies for enrolling Black/African American participants to the Adventist Health Study-2 (AHS-2) is described. The study's focus is diet and breast, prostate and colon cancer.


METHODS
Promotions centered on trust, relationship building and incentives for increasing enrollment and questionnaire return rate. Of the sub-studies described, one had a randomized control group, and the others, informal controls. The subjects are from all states of the U.S. and some provinces of Canada. The offer of a Black art piece, follow-up calls, a competitive tournament as well as other strategies accounted for nearly 3,000 additional returns even though they were often used in small subsets.


RESULTS
Flexibility and multiple strategies proved advantageous in gaining the cooperation of Blacks, who are usually reluctant to participate in research studies.


CONCLUSIONS
Lessons learned during initial enrollment should help us retain our final Black cohort of 26,000, and obtain new information when required.
School of Public Health, Health Promotion & Education, Loma Linda University, 24951 North Circle Dr, NH 1511, Loma Linda, CA 92350, USA. pherring@llu.edu.
Patti
P
Herring
Terry
T
Butler
Sonja
S
Hall
Hannelore
H
Bennett
Susanne B
SB
Montgomery
Gary
G
Fraser
D001741:Black or African American / Q000523:psychology*; D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000453:epidemiology; D002170:Canada / Q000453:epidemiology; D015331:Cohort Studies; D003110:Colonic Neoplasms / Q000453:epidemiology; D003362:Cost-Benefit Analysis; D004032:Diet; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009042:Motivation; D018579:Patient Selection; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D011471:Prostatic Neoplasms / Q000453:epidemiology; D012201:Reward; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014481:United States / Q000453:epidemiology