Participant Recruitment Tracker

Recruitment rate = (participants enrolled / eligible individuals contacted) × 100. Response rate = (individuals who responded / total contacted) × 100. For example, if you contact 200 eligible people, 120 respond, and 80 enroll, your response rate is 60% (120/200) and recruitment rate is 40% (80/200). Track these metrics throughout recruitment to identify if low enrollment is due to eligibility issues, contact problems, or consent refusal. Adjust recruitment strategies accordingly.

First, analyze where the bottleneck occurs: few eligible individuals, low response rates, or high refusal rates. Solutions include: expanding recruitment locations, offering more flexible scheduling, increasing compensation, simplifying participation requirements, improving recruitment materials' clarity, using alternative outreach methods (social media, community partners, snowball sampling), or extending recruitment period. Document all recruitment strategies and their effectiveness for transparent methodology reporting.

Create a screening checklist with all inclusion/exclusion criteria from your IRB protocol. For each potential participant, document: initial contact date, screening completion, each criterion's pass/fail status, overall eligibility determination, and reasons for ineligibility if applicable. Track screening completion rate (what percentage complete screening vs. drop out early) separately from eligibility rate (what percentage of screened individuals are eligible). This identifies whether recruitment challenges stem from finding eligible individuals or engaging interested ones.