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RESEARCH: Usha Menon, Aleksandra Gentry-Maharaj, Andy Ryan, Aarti Sharma, Matthew Burnell, Rachel Hallett, Sara Lewis, Alberto Lopez, Keith Godfrey, David Oram, Jonathan Herod, Karin Williamson, Mourad Seif, Ian Scott, Tim Mould, Robert Woolas, John Murdoch, Stephen Dobbs, Nazar Amso, Simon Leeson, Derek Cruickshank, Ali McGuire, Stuart Campbell, Lesley Fallowfield, Steve Skates, Mahesh Parmar, and Ian Jacobs Recruitment to multicentre trials—lessons from UKCTOCS: descriptive study BMJ 2008; 337: a2079 [Abstract] [Full text]

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Evidence about enhancing recruitment to large-scale trials

Bruce Neal   (16 November 2008)

Evidence about enhancing recruitment to large-scale trials 16 November 2008
Bruce Neal, Professor of Medicine George Institute, University of Sydney, Australia NSW 2026 Send response to journal: Re: Evidence about enhancing recruitment to large-scale trials	Dear Usha I read with interest your report on factors influencing recruitment to the large-scale UKCOTCS project. We too have been interested in strategies to enhance recruitment to large-scale trials and made the following report in 2007. Monaghan H, Richens A, Colman S, Currie R, Girgis S, Jayne K, Neal B, Patel A. A randomised trial of the effects of an intensive communication strategy on recruitment into large-scale multi-centre trial. Contemp Clin Trials 2007; 28 1-5. (PMID: 16904951) As you will see, we randomised our sites to different strategies supporting recruitment to see if they intervention really did have an effect. If you embark upon another such project as UKCOTCS you might want to consider a similar randomised design addressing another aspect of recruitment. The additional cost of such a project is minimal and the value of the higher level of evidence is potentially substantial. Congratulations again on a great project and a great paper. Kind regards Bruce Competing interests: None declared