Southampton Health Technology Assessments Centre (SHTAC), Wessex Institute, Faculty of Medicine, University of Southampton, Alpha House, Southampton Science Park, Southampton, SO16 7NS, UK.
Wessex Institute, Faculty of Medicine, University of Southampton, Alpha House, Southampton Science Park, Southampton, SO16 7NS, UK.
Trials. 2020 Jun 5;21(1):478. doi: 10.1186/s13063-020-04358-3.
Recruiting and retaining participants in randomised controlled trials (RCTs) is challenging. Digital tools, such as social media, data mining, email or text-messaging, could improve recruitment or retention, but an overview of this research area is lacking. We aimed to systematically map the characteristics of digital recruitment and retention tools for RCTs, and the features of the comparative studies that have evaluated the effectiveness of these tools during the past 10 years.
We searched Medline, Embase, other databases, the Internet, and relevant web sites in July 2018 to identify comparative studies of digital tools for recruiting and/or retaining participants in health RCTs. Two reviewers independently screened references against protocol-specified eligibility criteria. Included studies were coded by one reviewer with 20% checked by a second reviewer, using pre-defined keywords to describe characteristics of the studies, populations and digital tools evaluated.
We identified 9163 potentially relevant references, of which 104 articles reporting 105 comparative studies were included in the systematic map. The number of published studies on digital tools has doubled in the past decade, but most studies evaluated digital tools for recruitment rather than retention. The key health areas investigated were health promotion, cancers, circulatory system diseases and mental health. Few studies focussed on minority or under-served populations, and most studies were observational. The most frequently-studied digital tools were social media, Internet sites, email and tv/radio for recruitment; and email and text-messaging for retention. One quarter of the studies measured efficiency (cost per recruited or retained participant) but few studies have evaluated people's attitudes towards the use of digital tools.
This systematic map highlights a number of evidence gaps and may help stakeholders to identify and prioritise further research needs. In particular, there is a need for rigorous research on the efficiency of the digital tools and their impact on RCT participants and investigators, perhaps as studies-within-a-trial (SWAT) research. There is also a need for research into how digital tools may improve participant retention in RCTs which is currently underrepresented relative to recruitment research.
Not registered; based on a pre-specified protocol, peer-reviewed by the project's Advisory Board.
招募和保留随机对照试验（RCT）的参与者具有挑战性。数字工具，如社交媒体、数据挖掘、电子邮件或短信，可以改善招募或保留效果，但该研究领域的概述尚缺乏。我们旨在系统地绘制 RCT 中数字招募和保留工具的特征图，并概述过去 10 年中评估这些工具有效性的比较研究的特征。
我们于 2018 年 7 月检索了 Medline、Embase 等数据库、互联网和相关网站，以确定招募和/或保留健康 RCT 参与者的数字工具的比较研究。两名审查员独立根据方案规定的纳入标准筛选参考文献。纳入的研究由一名审查员进行编码，另一名审查员检查 20%的内容，使用预定义的关键词来描述研究、人群和评估的数字工具的特征。
我们确定了 9163 篇潜在相关参考文献，其中 104 篇文章报道了 105 项比较研究，被纳入系统图谱。过去十年中，关于数字工具的研究数量增加了一倍，但大多数研究评估的是数字工具的招募效果，而非保留效果。调查的主要健康领域包括促进健康、癌症、循环系统疾病和心理健康。少数研究关注少数民族或服务不足的人群，且大多数研究为观察性研究。研究最多的数字工具是社交媒体、互联网网站、电子邮件和电视/广播用于招募；电子邮件和短信用于保留。四分之一的研究测量了效率（每位招募或保留的参与者的成本），但很少有研究评估人们对使用数字工具的态度。
该系统图谱突出了一些证据空白，并可能有助于利益相关者确定和确定进一步的研究需求。特别是，需要对数字工具的效率及其对 RCT 参与者和研究人员的影响进行严格的研究，或许可以作为试验内研究（SWAT）研究。还需要研究数字工具如何提高 RCT 中参与者的保留率，相对于招募研究，目前这方面的研究相对较少。
未注册；基于预先指定的方案，由项目咨询委员会同行评审。
