JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Racial/ethnic minority groups are underrepresented in health research, contributing to persistent health disparities in the nation. Identifying effective recruitment and retention strategies among minority groups and their subpopulations is an important research agenda. With the ubiquitous use of the Internet now, web-based intervention approaches are increasingly popular. It is not completely clear which recruitment and retention strategies have been successful in web-based intervention trials targeting racial/ethnic minorities.

Objective:

1) To describe lessons learned in recruiting and retaining one of the understudied ethnic minority women—Korean American—enrolled in a web-based intervention trial and 2) to compare our findings to the strategies reported in relevant published web-based intervention trials.

Methods:

Multiple sources of data were used to address the objectives of this study including study team’s meeting minutes, participant tracking and contact log, survey reports, and post-intervention interviews. Additionally, an electronic search involving two databases (PubMed and Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature) was done to identify published studies using web-based interventions. Qualitative analysis was then performed to identify common themes addressing recruitment and retention strategies across the trials using web-based intervention modalities.

Results:

A total of nine categories of recruitment and retention strategies emerged: authentic care; accommodation of time, place, and transportation; financial incentives; diversity among study team; multiple, yet standardized modes of communication; mobilizing existing community relationships with efforts to build trust; prioritizing features of web-based intervention; combined use of online and direct recruitment; and self-directed online intervention with human support. While all of the studies included in the analysis combined multiple strategies, prioritizing features of web-based intervention or use of human support were particularly relevant to promoting recruitment and retention of racial/ethnic minorities for web-based intervention trials.

Conclusions:

Growing prevalence of Internet usage among racial/ethnic minority populations represents an excellent opportunity to design and deliver intervention programs via the Internet. Future research should explore and compare successful recruitment and retention methods between race or ethnic groups for web-based intervention. Clinical Trial: e-CHEC-uP: Scaling up an Efficacious Cancer Screening Intervention for Women With Limited English (NCT03726619); https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03726619