Recruiting women for health research

Introduction. Participant recruitment for research can be arduous, especially when it involves overseas-born migrants and/or mothers with young children. This paper examines the recruitment process for a qualitative research study in which Australian-born women (ABW) and overseas born (OBW) with previous gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) were recruited for face-to-face semi-structured interviews on healthy lifestyle adoption. Methods. A two-step recruitment process was used: (1) The Diabetes in Pregnancy Service [DIPS] staff at The Canberra Hospital, who were previously involved in the care of the women during pregnancy, contacted potential participants by phoning every woman from the patient list obtained from the medical records department, starting from the first women who registered on 1st June 2009 to 31st May 2011; (2) The chief investigator (CI) subsequently contacted the women who showed interest in participating. Recruitment goals were set at data saturation or maximum of 18 interviews within each of the two groups. Results. Forty two % [18/43] ABW and 50 % OBW [53/106] showed interest in participation following the first contact. Consent to participate once contacted by the CI was 44% [8/18, 19% of initial 43 contacted] for ABW and 28% [15/53; 14% of initial 106 contacted] for OBW. No significant difference was observed in response rate between ABW and OBW at the DIPS staff (P=0.8) and at the CI level (P=0.8). Recruiting OBW had additional challenges, such as higher number of phone calls before making contact (2.0 ± 1.0 (ABW), vs. 3.0 ± 1.6 (OBW)) longer phone calls (7.5 ± 3.8 (ABW) vs.13 ± 5.2 minutes (OBW)) and obtaining permission from spouse (n=4). Due to difficulties in recruitment of the required number of OBW, the data collection continued for four months, two months longer than planned. Conclusions. It is difficult to recruit women for this type of health related research; however, recruiting OBW has additional challenges, which must be taken into consideration before planning a study.