Recruitment of African American men: overcoming challenges for an epidemiological study of personality and health.

This article describes the efforts of the St. Louis Personality and Aging Network (SPAN) team to increase participation by African American men in our study. Initially, African American men were participating at a rate far lower than both European American men and women and African American women. Two years into the study, the SPAN team constructed a letter targeted toward African American men that specifically requested their participation in the study. This letter was mailed to households in various areas of the city that were heavily populated by African Americans. As a result of this letter and other enhancement strategies, the proportion of men in our African American sample increased from 31% to 43% (71 African American men were recruited in the first two years of the study, compared to 147 recruited in the year-and-a-half after the letter was distributed). The article also highlights other strategies to recruit and retain African American men in mental health studies.