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Recruitment and Retention Strategies for Environmental Exposure Studies: Lessons from the Detroit Exposure and Aerosol Research Study
Citation:
Phillips, M., C. E. RODES, J. Thornburg, R. WHITMORE, A. F. VETTE, AND R. W. WILLIAMS. Recruitment and Retention Strategies for Environmental Exposure Studies: Lessons from the Detroit Exposure and Aerosol Research Study. RTI Press. RTI International Research Publications, Research Triangle Park, NC, MR-0021-1011(November):1-22, (2010).
Impact/Purpose:
The National Exposure Research Laboratory′s (NERL) Human Exposure and Atmospheric Sciences Division (HEASD) conducts research in support of EPA′s mission to protect human health and the environment. HEASD′s research program supports Goal 1 (Clean Air) and Goal 4 (Healthy People) of EPA′s strategic plan. More specifically, our division conducts research to characterize the movement of pollutants from the source to contact with humans. Our multidisciplinary research program produces Methods, Measurements, and Models to identify relationships between and characterize processes that link source emissions, environmental concentrations, human exposures, and target-tissue dose. The impact of these tools is improved regulatory programs and policies for EPA.
Description:
The Environmental Protection Agency’s Detroit Exposure and Aerosol Research Study (DEARS) was a complex 3-year personal exposure study. The six geographically defined areas in the Detroit (Wayne County), Michigan, area used as study locations are ethnically diverse; the majority of the residents are African American or Hispanic. Each summer and winter season, the study solicited 40 adult nonsmoking study participants from these predefined areas. Participants were asked to allow home visits each morning for a week, to wear a personal exposure monitoring vest, and to complete an activity diary and follow-up questionnaire each day. Community action groups, recruitment staff, and environmental technicians coordinated the recruitment and environmental sampling activities. Although the study had an overall response rate of 19 percent, recruitment goals were met nearly every season in each geographic area. Over-recruitment was necessary to replace dropouts. Recruitment staff used face-to-face household recruitment to enroll 136 study participants. Among participants, 73 percent participated in two seasons. Details about the recruitment techniques used in exposure studies, as well as the lessons learned, rarely appear in the literature. This report delineates the lessons from the DEARS that may be beneficial to other researchers using similar study designs in low-income, ethnically diverse urban areas.
URLs/Downloads:
Recruitment and Retention Strategies for Environmental Exposure Studies: Lessons from the Detroit Exposure and Aerosol Research Study (PDF, NA pp, 7488 KB, about PDF)RTI Press
