Does practice location or academic connection affect recruitment of patients as research subjects?

Recruitment rates of study subjects are important planning and validity issues for many research projects. The Community Cholesterol Survey Project (CCSP) offered an opportunity to examine recruitment rates by type of study practice. The CCSP used six primary care practices (2 urban, 2 suburban, 2 rural), including a suburban academic residency program. Recruitment into the study was performed by a single dietician who followed the same procedure at each site. The overall recruitment rate of subjects was 79%. The residency site had the lowest recruitment rate (59%), which was significantly lower than any of the other sites (79% to 90%, average 84%, p less than 0.001). No demographic factors provided an explanation for this finding. The demographic factors examined included patient age, gender, race, social status, marital status, years in the practice, and presence of underlying medical conditions. These results add to the evidence that recruitment rates in nonacademic practices may be substantially better than those in residency practices and other academic sites.