Waheed Waquas, Husain Nusrat, Allen Gill, Atif Najia, Aseem Saadia, Waquas Ayesha, Garrett Charlotte, Sheikh Saima, Syed Aleena, Gask Linda, Bower Peter
NIHR School for Primary Care Research, Manchester Academic Health Science Centre, Centre for Primary Care, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK; Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust, Preston, UK.
Institute of Brain, Behaviour and Mental Health, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK; Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust, Preston, UK.
J Affect Disord. 2015 Oct 1;185:195-203. doi: 10.1016/j.jad.2015.06.046. Epub 2015 Jun 29.
In the United Kingdom, ethnic minority group's particularly British South Asian women have higher rates of depression than their white counterparts. Despite this they remain under represented in mental health trials. Whilst the US legislation mandates the inclusion of ethnic minorities into research, there are no similar initiatives in the UK. Barriers in recruiting these hard to reach ethnic groups are cited as major reasons behind this under representation. Once these barriers are encountered it becomes a challenge for the researchers to overcome them. As there is paucity of research in this specific area through this paper we want to share our strategies in recruiting British South Asians thus encouraging other researchers to consider ethnic minority inclusion into research.
Our published systematic review on the barriers to recruitment of ethnic minority participants into mental health research developed a typology of thirty three ethnic recruitment barriers described under five themes. We aimed to find strategies to overcome these barriers from five depression trials for British South Asians conducted by our research group. Firstly we extracted data on recruitment strategies from the published papers. Later researchers involved in these five trials formed a working group to add to these extracted strategies. Finally these strategies were matched to the individual barriers described in the typology.
Multiple recruitment strategies were described by the researchers. These strategies were matched to all but two recruitment barriers related to psychopathology/substance misuse by the participants and paucity of healthcare related resources. Multiple strategies were found to be effective against each barrier and appropriate ones could be selected by the researchers after considering available resources at hand.
Findings from this paper have implications for the design of recruitment strategies for hard to recruit ethnic minority groups to health care research. There is need for wider training and support of researchers to give them the skills to recruit these ethnic groups. Further development and evaluation of these strategies will lead to increased recruitment accruals.
在英国，少数族裔群体，尤其是英国南亚裔女性的抑郁症发病率高于白人。尽管如此，她们在心理健康试验中的代表性仍然不足。虽然美国立法要求将少数族裔纳入研究，但英国没有类似举措。招募这些难以接触到的族裔群体存在障碍被认为是代表性不足的主要原因。一旦遇到这些障碍，研究人员要克服它们就成为一项挑战。由于在这一特定领域的研究匮乏，我们希望通过本文分享我们招募英国南亚裔的策略，从而鼓励其他研究人员考虑将少数族裔纳入研究。
我们发表的关于少数族裔参与者参与心理健康研究招募障碍的系统评价，制定了一个由五个主题下描述的33个族裔招募障碍类型。我们旨在从我们研究小组进行的五项针对英国南亚裔的抑郁症试验中找到克服这些障碍的策略。首先，我们从已发表的论文中提取关于招募策略的数据。随后，参与这五项试验的研究人员组成了一个工作组，以补充这些提取的策略。最后，将这些策略与类型学中描述的各个障碍相匹配。
研究人员描述了多种招募策略。除了与参与者的精神病理学/药物滥用以及医疗保健相关资源匮乏有关的两个招募障碍外，这些策略与所有障碍都相匹配。发现多种策略对每个障碍都有效，研究人员可以在考虑手头可用资源后选择合适的策略。
本文的研究结果对难以招募的少数族裔群体参与医疗保健研究的招募策略设计具有启示意义。需要对研究人员进行更广泛的培训和支持，以使他们具备招募这些族裔群体的技能。对这些策略的进一步开发和评估将导致招募人数增加。
