Retention Best Practices

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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. Overcome Transportation Barriers

• Providing free transportation to and from the research site or compensation for expenses related to participation may effectively increase retention.

5. Promote Convenience

• Providing evening and weekend hours, child care services, and transportation vouchers can make participation more convenient for some participants.

6. 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.