Digital tools for the recruitment and retention of participants in randomised controlled trials: a systematic map

作者：Geoff K Frampton, Jonathan Shepherd, Karen Pickett, Gareth Griffiths, Jeremy C Wyatt · 发表于：Trials · 年份：2020 · DOI：10.1186/s13063-020-04358-3 · 被引用次数：133 · 研究领域：Ethics in Clinical Research、Focus Groups and Qualitative Methods、Social Media in Health Education

BACKGROUND: 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. METHODS: 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. RESULTS: 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 mo...