Step 2: Conducting a Cancer Prevention Clinical Trial
Retention and Adherence
Keeping clinical trial participants interested, participating, and committed to a study is the goal of retention efforts. These activities promote maximum adherence to the study design throughout the course of a clinical trial. Maintaining adherence and retention, however, is especially challenging for long-term cancer prevention trials.
Generally, recruitment and adherence efforts:
- Begin during the initial interaction with a potential participant, not after randomization; and
- Occur on an ongoing basic in a dynamic process, which requires promoting and routinely evaluating adherence and retention methods.
DCP's retention and adherence manual template (pdf, 32kb) describes typical factors that can lead to non-adherence, along with established strategies to maintain study participants' interest.
