Seattle Epidemiologic Research and Information Center, Department of Veterans Affairs Puget Sound Health Care System, Seattle, WA, USA.
Department of Epidemiology, University of Washington School of Public Health, Seattle, WA, USA.
BMC Med Res Methodol. 2018 Aug 29;18(1):88. doi: 10.1186/s12874-018-0546-2.
Research participant recruitment is often fraught with obstacles. Poor response rates can reduce statistical power, threaten both internal and external validity, and increase study costs and duration. Military personnel are socialized to a specific set of laws, norms, traditions, and values; their willingness to participate in research may differ from civilians. The aims of this study were to better understand the views of United States (US) Veterans who served in Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF)/ Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) on research and motivators for participating in research to inform recruitment for a planned observational study of respiratory health in OEF/OIF Veterans.
We conducted 10 focus groups in a purposive sample of OEF/OIF Veterans (n = 89) in five US cities in 2015. Key topics included: reasons for participating or declining to participate in health-related research, logistics around study recruitment and conduct, compensation, written materials, and information sharing preferences for study results. Two authors independently coded the data using template analysis.
Participants identified three criteria that motivated a decision to participate in health-related research: 1) adequate compensation, 2) desire to help other Veterans, and 3) significance and relevance of the research topic. For many, both sufficient compensation and a sense that the study would help other Veterans were critical. The importance of transparency arose as a key theme; Veterans communicated that vague language about study aims or procedures engendered distrust. Lastly, participants expressed a desire for studies to communicate results of their specific health tests, as well as overall study findings, back to research participants.
OEF/OIF Veterans described trust, transparent communication, and respect as essential characteristics of research in which they would be willing to participate. Additional studies are needed to determine whether our results generalize to other US Veterans; nevertheless, our results highlight precepts that have been reported as important for recruitment in other populations. Researchers may benefit from using community-engaged research methods to seek feedback on recruitment materials and strategies prior to initiating research. For costly studies targeting a large sample (i.e. in the thousands), it may be important to test a variety of recruitment strategies.
研究参与者的招募通常充满了障碍。低响应率会降低统计效力，威胁内部和外部有效性，并增加研究成本和持续时间。军人被社会化到一套特定的法律、规范、传统和价值观；他们参与研究的意愿可能与平民不同。本研究的目的是更好地了解曾在持久自由行动（OEF）/伊拉克自由行动（OIF）中服役的美国退伍军人对研究的看法，以及他们参与研究的动机，以便为一项计划中的 OEF/OIF 退伍军人呼吸系统健康观察研究招募参与者。
我们在 2015 年在五个美国城市的有目的的 OEF/OIF 退伍军人样本中进行了 10 个焦点小组。主要话题包括：参与或拒绝参与与健康相关的研究的原因、研究招募和进行的后勤工作、补偿、书面材料以及对研究结果的信息共享偏好。两位作者使用模板分析独立对数据进行编码。
参与者确定了三个决定参与健康相关研究的标准：1）充足的补偿，2）帮助其他退伍军人的愿望，3）研究主题的意义和相关性。对许多人来说，足够的补偿和研究将帮助其他退伍军人的意识都是至关重要的。透明度的重要性是一个关键主题；退伍军人表示，对研究目的或程序的模糊语言会引起不信任。最后，参与者表示希望研究人员将他们特定的健康测试结果以及总体研究结果传达给研究参与者。
OEF/OIF 退伍军人描述了信任、透明沟通和尊重，这些是他们愿意参与的研究的基本特征。需要进一步的研究来确定我们的结果是否适用于其他美国退伍军人；然而，我们的结果强调了其他人群报告的重要招募原则。研究人员可能受益于使用社区参与研究方法，在开始研究之前寻求对招募材料和策略的反馈。对于针对大量样本（即数千人）的昂贵研究，可能需要测试各种招募策略。
