Recruiting for a longitudinal study: Who to choose, how to choose and how to enhance participation?

Abstract

There are many methods for establishing and recruiting participants for longitudinal studies. Mostly, the participants will be sampled from a population, and the study will need some list or methods for identifying and selecting the people to be invited to take part in the study. The choice of methods for selecting and recruiting participants will depend on the nature ofthe research question and the data to be gathered and on practical considerations such as cost and feasibility. In this paper we consider various sampling frames and methods, and we describe in detail the strategies used to contact women from the Australian Longitudinal Study on Womens Health (ALSWH) sample and to encourage their participation in the study.