Currently submitted to: JMIR Rehabilitation and Assistive Technologies
Date Submitted: Oct 27, 2025
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Barriers and Facilitators to Willingness to Participate in Stroke Research Studies: A Qualitative Descriptive Study Focusing on the Role of Sex and Gender
ABSTRACT
Background:
Women have lower representation in stroke clinical trials despite similar stroke incidence to men.
Objective:
This study explored barriers and facilitators for individuals with stroke regarding willingness to participate in stroke research as well as preferences regarding recruitment material, with a particular focus on sex and gender differences.
Methods:
This qualitative descriptive study involved online focus groups and individual interviews. Participants included men and women living with stroke. The study employed an intersectionality lens and the Theoretical Domains Framework. Thematic analysis was used.
Results:
Thirteen participants (46% women) were included. Identified barriers included mistrust, exclusion and inaccessibility, participants' perception of not being valued by the researchers, and concerns regarding pharmacological interventions. Identified facilitators included trust, accessibility, participants’ perceptions of researchers’ characteristics and principles, recruitment approach, characteristics of the study, receiving compensation, and altruism as well as perceived representation, social support, and personal benefit.
Conclusions:
Men and women identified similar barriers and facilitators regarding willingness to participate. However, medication risk (barrier) and altruism (facilitator) resonated more with women. Future research should focus on understanding how addressing these barriers and facilitators can impact recruitment of both sexes.
Citation
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.