A Personal Touch: The Most Important Strategy for Recruiting Latino Research Participants

Abstract

People from non-White racial groups and other underserved populations, including Latinos, are frequently reluctant to participate in research. Yet their participation into research is foundational to producing information that researchers and health care providers need to address health disparities. The purpose of this article is to describe challenges we have encountered along with culturally relevant strategies we used in five research studies to recruit Mexican American participants from community settings, some of whom were also of low socioeconomic status. We found that the most effective recruitment strategies reflect the common cultural values of personalismo, simpátia, confianza, respeto, and familismo.

Strategies for conducting health research with Latinos during times of political incivility

“…Thus, the impact of political incivility was not limited to undocumented Latinos in this state. What occurred in the study described here is aligned with other studies identified in the literature where national sentiment, in relation to anti‐immigration, had a negative impact on Latino participation in research (García et al., ; Martinez et al., ; Vincent et al., ). The PI has slowly overcome the impediments brought on by extant political incivility against US Latinos by returning to a word of mouth approach, maintaining values common to most Latino populations (discussed further in the following section) and sustaining consistent communication with Latino serving organizations to reaffirm the PIs presence in the community.…”

“…Concerns about privacy (Sheehan et al., ) and protection of confidentiality (García et al., ) also loom for some potential and current participants. Others report fears about being further exposed to discrimination (García et al., ). In addition to typical study design issues that researchers face in working with marginalized population such as difficulty maintaining pathways for ongoing contact (García et al., ; Nguyen, Yan, Ell, Gonzalez, & Enguidanos, ), other challenges can emerge such as research staff not being properly trained or when the targeted recruitment of a particular minority group goes against their general feeling about fairness.…”

“…The most commonly identified way to reduce issues related to distrust was to find ways to incorporate personal contact and creating mutual trust through relationship‐building between the participants, research staff, family and peers (Ceballos et al., ; Díaz, Denner, & Ortiz, ; García et al., ; Sheehan et al., ) and through the use of brokers, community health workers or promotores (Díaz et al., ). We argue that this will continue to be a very important aspect of making health research accessible to Latino participants.…”

“…Research has linked this fear to health indicators (Sheehan et al, 2016). Concerns about privacy (Sheehan et al, 2016) and protection of confidentiality (García et al, 2017) also loom for some potential and current participants. Others report fears about being further exposed to discrimination (García et al, 2017).…”

“…In addition to typical study design issues that researchers face in working with marginalized population such as difficulty maintaining pathways for ongoing contact (García et al, 2017;Nguyen, Yan, Ell, Gonzalez, & Enguidanos, 2017), other challenges can emerge such as research staff not being properly trained or when the targeted recruitment of a particular minority group goes against their general feeling about fairness. In a recent study of principal investigators, research staff, referring clinicians and other health leaders Niranjan et al (2017) found that the reluctance among some staff to recruit specifically on race was something that impeded their success in completing the study.…”