title: Recruitment strategies at the Iowa site for parent/infant pairs in a longitudinal dental caries study.
abstract: Recruitment of parent/infant pairs can be more difficult and challenging than recruitment of adult subjects alone as the parent has to consider themselves along with the infant to be study participants. In order to determine which recruitment methods most effectively resulted in accrual of subjects, recruitment efforts at the University of Iowa were evaluated, one of three clinical sites involved in a longitudinal prospective study of dental caries.
  
  
  
  Enrollment goals were 300 parent/infant pairs within a year. Recruitment strategies included (1) a direct mailing to potential subjects who were University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics patients and potentially met inclusion criteria; (2) face-to-face recruitment visits at medical offices; (3) provision of recruitment materials to staff at off-campus agencies and medical offices serving low-income individuals; (4) a campus-wide mass e-mail; (5) recruitment materials to daycare centers and neighborhood centers; and (6) recruitment at a children's museum.
  
  
  
  From these recruitment efforts, 515 potential participants expressed interest and were screened for this study and 348 (68%) were enrolled during an 11-month time period. The face-to-face strategy had the highest recruitment rate of 25%, followed by direct individual mailings at 9% and follow-up telephone calls at 7%. For the face-to-face strategy, the contact at the children's museum was most successful compared to the other office settings. The lowest rate of recruitment of 0.09% was attained with the mass e-mail. However, in terms of actual numbers recruited, the mass e-mail remained an important modality since it yielded 21 recruits and was much less time-intensive.
  
  
  
  An intensive, multi-pronged recruitment strategy proved successful in meeting enrollment goals and resulted in finishing the enrollment prior to the projected study deadline. Effective recruitment approaches are imperative for a study's success and each recruitment strategy needs to be budgeted and planned for in a study. Investigators may need to adapt their approach to attain the needed number of subjects. Planning needs to include the numbers needed to be approached to attain your recruitment goal, how you will recruit, who will be responsible, and the costs and time commitment for various strategies.
authors.affiliation: Department of Family Medicine, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA jeanette-daly@uiowa.edu.
authors.forename: Jeanette M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Daly
authors.affiliation: Department of Family Medicine, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA Department of Epidemiology, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA.
authors.forename: Barcey T
authors.initials: BT
authors.lastname: Levy
authors.affiliation: Department of Family Medicine, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA.
authors.forename: Yinghui
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.affiliation: College of Dentistry, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA.
authors.forename: Steven M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Levy
authors.affiliation: School of Dentistry, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
authors.forename: Margherita
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Fontana
mesh_terms: D003731:Dental Caries; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007484:Iowa; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D010290:Parents; D018579:Patient Selection; D011446:Prospective Studies
keywords: Study recruitment; dental caries; family physicians; practice-based research network