Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Formative Research
Date Submitted: May 24, 2024
Date Accepted: Dec 5, 2024
Recruitment Challenges and Strategies in a Technology-Based Intervention for Dementia Caregivers: A Descriptive Study
ABSTRACT
Background:
Researchers have encountered challenges in recruiting unpaid caregivers of people living with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias for intervention studies. However, little is known about the reasons for non-participation in in-home smarthealth interventions in community-based settings.
Objective:
This study aimed to 1) assess recruitment rates in a smarthealth technology intervention for caregivers of people living with Alzheimer's disease and related dementias and reasons for non-participation among them and 2) discuss lessons learned from recruitment challenges and strategies to improve recruitment.
Methods:
The smarthealth intervention was a four-month, single-arm trial designed to evaluate an in-home, technology-based intervention that monitors stressful moments for caregiving dyads through acoustic signals and to provide the caregivers with real-time stress management strategies. Recruitment involved two main methods: on-site engagement by a recruiter from a memory clinic and social media advertising. Caregivers were screened for eligibility by phone between January 2021 and September 2023. Recruitment rates, reasons for non-participation, and participant demographics were analyzed using descriptive statistics.
Results:
Of 201 caregivers contacted, 11 were enrolled in the study. Eighty-two caregivers did not return the screening call, and others did not participate due to privacy concerns (n = 30), lack of interest (n = 29), and burdensome study procedures (n = 26). Our recruitment strategies included addressing privacy concerns, visualizing collected data through a dashboard, boosting social media presence, increasing the recruitment budget, updating advertisements, and preparing and deploying additional study devices.
Conclusions:
The study highlighted barriers to participation in the smarthealth intervention. Despite several recruitment strategies, enrollment rates remained below expectations. These findings underscore the need for future research to explore alternative methods for increasing the recruitment of informal dementia caregivers in technology-based intervention studies. Clinical Trial: This study was registered with ClinicalTrials.gov (ID No. NCT04536701).
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