title: The Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health: Using Focus Groups to Inform Recruitment.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Recruitment and retention of participants to large-scale, longitudinal studies can be a challenge, particularly when trying to target young women. Qualitative inquiries with members of the target population can prove valuable in assisting with the development of effective recruiting techniques. Researchers in the current study made use of focus group methodology to identify how to encourage young women aged 18-23 to participate in a national cohort online survey.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  Our objectives were to gain insight into how to encourage young women to participate in a large-scale, longitudinal health survey, as well as to evaluate the survey instrument and mode of administration.
  
  
  METHODS
  The Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health used focus group methodology to learn how to encourage young women to participate in a large-scale, longitudinal Web-based health survey and to evaluate the survey instrument and mode of administration. Nineteen groups, involving 75 women aged 18-23 years, were held in remote, regional, and urban areas of New South Wales and Queensland.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Focus groups were held in 2 stages, with discussions lasting from 19 minutes to over 1 hour. The focus groups allowed concord to be reached regarding survey promotion using social media, why personal information was needed, strategies to ensure confidentiality, how best to ask sensitive questions, and survey design for ease of completion. Recruitment into the focus groups proved difficult: the groups varied in size between 1 and 8 participants, with the majority conducted with 2 participants.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Intense recruitment efforts and variation in final focus group numbers highlights the "hard to reach" character of young women. However, the benefits of conducting focus group discussions as a preparatory stage to the recruitment of a large cohort for a longitudinal Web-based health survey were upheld.
authors.affiliation: University of Newcastle, Research Centre for Generational Health and Ageing, Callaghan, Australia. meredith.tavener@newcastle.edu.au.
authors.forename: Meredith
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5972-3815
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Tavener
authors.forename: Rosemary
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0086-9262
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Mooney
authors.forename: Clare
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1406-6353
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Thomson
authors.forename: Deborah
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4745-8612
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Loxton
keywords: Focus groups; longitudinal studies; methodology; mobile phones; participant recruitment; social media; surveys; web-based survey