Issues in Recruiting and Retaining Asian American Breast Cancer Survivors in a Technology-Based Intervention Study.
Eun-Ok Im, Sangmi Kim, Shu Xu and 6 others
PMID 30346330WHAT IT FOUND
Recruiting Asian American breast cancer survivors into online health studies required matching staff by specific sub-ethnicity, not just broad race.
Using native-language coaching, trusted community gatekeepers, and popular apps like WeChat or KakaoTalk was essential for retention.
Key findings
01Cultural matching must occur at the sub-ethnic level; Korean staff failed to recruit Chinese women, while Chinese staff succeeded.
02Participants ignored project website chats but actively engaged via ethnic-specific apps like WeChat, KakaoTalk, and Line.
03Gatekeepers such as webmasters and pastors were essential for recruitment, requiring trust-building through phone calls rather than email.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The analysis is based on only two years of a five-year ongoing study. Themes were derived from internal team documents, not direct patient interviews about their experience of the recruitment process. The study only included Chinese, Korean, and Japanese sub-ethnic groups, limiting generalizability to other Asian American populations.
Declared interests
None of the authors have any conflicts of interest to report.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret this as evidence that the technology-based intervention improved patient outcomes. This paper describes the process of recruiting and retaining participants, not the clinical effectiveness of the coaching or information provided.