Recruiting primary care physicians to qualitative research: Experiences and recommendations from a childhood cancer survivorship study

Primary care physicians (PCPs) can be difficult to recruit into health research, effecting the quality and value of the data collected. This study outlines participant and study design factors associated with increased response rates among PCPs invited to participates in a qualitative study at Sydney Children’s Hospital, Australia. 160 PCPs were contacted, of which 32 opted in to the study without follow up. With follow up, a further 42 PCPs opted in, with email appearing to be the most effective method. Almost double the number of interviews were successfully completed if scheduled via email versus phone. Results showed that study resources may best be allocated to email follow up, incentives and personalisation of study documents linking PCPs to patients. Implementing such strategies may improve response rates and help reduce non-response bias in qualitative studies. Read the full article here.