How are participants going to be identified?

This section contains the following: 


Introduction 

Successful trials depend on the investigating teams' ability to identify and recruit patients in order to attain a high participation rate. It is therefore important to have strategies in place to achieve this and to ensure that potential participants are not missed.  No single approach is correct. It depends on the nature of the trial and its recruitment goals.

There are several ways to identify potential research participants, the main method being through the clinician responsible for treating the patient.  Other methods can be direct advertising (e.g. newspaper adverts), information from databases of specific diseases (e.g. cancer registers), and reviewing medical records.

It is important to think about the implications of the different methods you select.  For example if advertising in local newspapers by poster or in clinics, a designated person in the trial office has to be available to take phone calls from people interested in being involved in the study.

Back to top


Things to consider 

Identifying patients -


Back to top  


Illustrative example 1 - The Reflux trial

The reflux trial was a multi-centre trial in 21 different hospitals throughout the UK, funded by the National Health Service Research and Development, Health technology Assessment programme. This was a randomised controlled trial of medical treatment vs surgery for the treatment of gastro-oesophageal reflux disease.  Patient's were identified through the hospital endoscopy list, referral from General Practitioners and through adverts in the local press and posters in hospital clinic waiting areas. 

The Reflux trial - poster and advert

Back to top  


Further reading

Mapstone J, Elbourne D, Roberts I.  Strategies to improve recruitment to research studies.  Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2007, issue 2.
Watson JM, Torgerson DJ. . Increasing recruitment to randomised trials: a review of randomised controlled trials. BMC Medical Research Methodology 2006, 6:34.
The STEPS Group. Recruitment to randomised trials: Strategies for Trial Enrolment and Participation Study (STEPS). Health Technology Assessment 2007. Vol 11.



Back to top   

This page was last updated March 2009.