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Retention Best Practices

NIMICT Orginal

Strategies for Successful Retention of Minorities and Women

  1. Understand Your Participants
  • Understand your participants; ask how you can better support them.
  • This may include visit planning, reminders, telephone calls to patients between visits, research staff availability and responsiveness, or convenient timing of appointments.
  1. Reach Out to Participants
  • Regular contact with study participants can improve retention.
  • Providing a toll-free phone number for participants can be a useful tool to improve research staff availability and accessibility.
  1. Provide Reimbursements
  • Returning to a study site to participate in a clinical trial may be difficult and time-consuming for study participants.
  • Providing reimbursements can help to ensure retention.
  1. Overcome Transportation Barriers
  • Providing free transportation to and from the research site or compensation for expenses related to participation may effectively increase retention.
  1. Promote Convenience
  • Providing evening and weekend hours, child care services, and transportation vouchers can make participation more convenient for some participants.
  1. Appreciate Investment of Time and Effort
  • Verbal recognition of effort, participation certificates, and letters of gratitude are all ways to show study participants how much they are valued.
  • Provide appreciation items. They can include calendars, thank you notes, birthday cards, meal vouchers or bags with the study logo.
 Research Staff