Recruitment of free-living elderly for nutrition research
1981
Coleman, Patricia | Krondl, Magdalena
Research with the elderly presents inherent problems in sampling, recruitment, and attrition. These problems were highlighted by efforts to recruit 400 elderly subjects of specified criteria (age, marital status, sex, ethnicity, health, and living arrangement) from a pool of 12,000 for a 3-year food selection study. Specific problems included inability to contact, ineligibility, securing equal numbers of males and females, and lack of cooperation. Factors influencing participation were a desire for privacy and noninvolvment, fear of disease discovery, and lack of interest or time; increasing age was not a factor. Other factors characterizing elderly populations such as travel, moving, illness, and death, were beyond researchers' control. As study obligations and method of contact also affect degree of participation, personal intervention through trusted intermediaries may decrease the attrition rate, as will minimizing the number and lengths of contacts needed. The expertise and personality of the interviewer are also important. Food habits were assessed in 194 subjects, 48.5% of the initial goal of 400. It was concluded that this response rate may be a reasonable expectation of nutrition research involving older persons. (nm)
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