How Can Retention in Clinical Trials be Improved?

Supervisors: Dr Katie Gillies (Health Services Research Unit) and Professor Shaun Treweek (Health Services Research Unit)

Background to the project:

While recruitment to clinical trials worries everyone (with reason) and often attracts targeted payments (eg NHS Health Boards are paid on trial recruitment statistics), retention - collecting complete primary outcome data from participants - often receives far less attention. This is short-sighted. Clearly a trial needs participants but it needs them because they generate outcome data and participants provide those only if they stay in the trial. A recent study reviewed the evidence of strategies used to improve retention in RCTs and found that monetary incentives were the only effective method to increase questionnaire response in RCTs. However, retention in a trial is not limited to return of questionnaires. For example, treatment compliance or attending a clinic can also be considered as aspects of trial retention.

To better understand the reasons underpinning poor trial retention and to explore the rationale for the use of difference strategies to improve retention in clinical trials, we are proposing a PhD that aims to explore aspects of retention in depth. Ultimately generating findings and recommendations for trialists to improve the design, conduct and delivery of clinical trials. By exploring these issues across a range of trials it will allow us to draw contextual conclusions about the barriers and enablers of retention across trials and also identify those that are trial specific. The exact focus of the work will be defined through a consensus based prioritisation exercise that will identify the top twenty research questions for retention in clinical trials.

Proposed research and techniques:

The overall aim of this research is to identify the top methodological questions for retention in clinical trials and develop new research projects to address these identified gaps. The research objectives can be defined as part of the PhD work and will be dependent on the questions identified in the prioritisation exercise. Techniques will involve systematic literature searching and synthesis of identified articles, consensus methods, questionnaires and semi-structured interviews.

Useful previous experience for the studentship:

An undergraduate degree in a relevant discipline or experience of research methods and running a research project would be helpful. Specific research skills can be learnt throughout the project but any prior knowledge of systematic reviews (quantitative and qualitative), semi-structured interviews, questionnaire design, and consensus methods would be an advantage.

Application:

Please select ’Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Applied Health Sciences’ from the list of programme options in the University of Aberdeen’s online postgraduate applicant portal to ensure that your application is passed to the correct school for processing. Then manually enter the name of the supervisor(s), project title and funder (Elphinstone) in the space provided.