Facilitators and barriers of participation in a longitudinal research on migrant families in Badalona (Spain): A qualitative approach

Abstract

Migrant populations are under-represented in health research. We conducted a community-based qualitative study with the aim to examine the willingness, barriers, facilitators and reasons for participating in longitudinal health research among migrants. In Badalona and Santa Coloma de Gramanet (Barcelona) from May to November 2014, 26 individual interviews and 8 discussion groups were conducted with a convenience sample of 76 migrants born in Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Morocco, Pakistan and China; and 9 key informants. Grounded Theory methods and thematic analysis was used to analyse the data. Atlas-ti(R) software was used. Participants were willing to participate in health surveys and biological samples testing, and agreed to be re-contacted after 12 months. Participants agreed to the same participation for their children. Participants reported that undertaking biological samples and knowledge of the health status of their children were the greatest benefits of participation in health research. Barriers to participation reported by participants were language difficulties, time constraints and mobility issues. Facilitators of participation included offering complete and understandable information about the study objectives and procedures; offering interviewers with the same migrant background, gender, country of origin and socioeconomic status as participants; building trust through ensuring proximity, privacy and confidentiality; respecting cultural relationships; and receiving monetary compensation and test results. Focusing on migrant families instead of individuals may facilitate participation in the study. Despite being beneficial in general, receipt of monetary compensation, inclusion of questions related to sexual and reproductive health, and blood sample testing resulted in distrust for a small number of participants. The simultaneous use of several Internet tools was the most recommended tool for recontact. Those with higher risk of mobility, greater language barriers and less Internet use were more difficult to re-contact. Study findings will help to improve participation and retention of migrants in longitudinal research. K E Y W O R D Sattitudes, cohort studies, families, health promotion, migrants, participation and empowerment

Barriers and recruitment strategies for precarious status migrants in Montreal, Canada

“…Second, in our study one challenge was to build stable links of trust with community organizations . Partnering with community organizations to sample target populations has been identified in the literature as useful for accessing the target population [13, 30, 59], and for overcoming the suspicions of hard-to-reach persons towards research [55]. However, in the present study, it was not always easy to build relationships of trust with all the community organizations and to fit exchange relationships into the time available.…”

“…The strategies were defined upstream from the recruitment, in response to the obstacles identified in the literature on recruiting hard-to-reach populations, and some strategies also emerged during the recruitment process. The obstacles were mainly linguistic and cultural barriers [11, 13], people’s suspicions regarding research [55], and the lack of any perceived benefit from participating. After these strategies were implemented, new challenges emerged, uncovered by the present study: the difficulty of identifying the target population who, being very heterogeneous, are not easily distinguishable from other members of their community; the challenges of creating trusting relationships with community members (community organizations and places of worship); ethical challenges regarding appropriate compensation for participation; and cultural challenges related to matching the ethnocultural identities of the interviewer and the interviewee.…”

“…In addition, researchers encounter language and cultural barriers [9–12], as well as difficulties in contacting and following up with persons who are often mobile [13, 14] . Authors have also identified lack of interest and fears regarding the consequences and benefits of research as a challenge [15, 16].…”

“…To our knowledge, in the literature there are only three reviews [8, 19, 35] and two interventional studies [13, 36] that have identified recruitment strategies for use in a diverse setting of migrants. Developing research recruitment strategies, however, requires a good understanding of this population’s diversity, at both the cultural and individual levels, in terms of people’s migration pathways, social status, and level of acculturation [37, 38].…”

A cross-sectional survey examining motivation and beliefs to participating in a web-based prospective cohort study on nutrition and health among individuals with a low socioeconomic status

“…Likewise, results from the present study showed that receiving a personalized brief health assessment was associated with high PBC and high intention to participate in the NutriQuébec project. On the other hand, other studies have shown that providing a financial incentive was effective to encourage low-income, unemployed or hard-to-reach individuals to participate in a study [49][50][51]. Yu et al reported that the use of a modest monetary incentive ($10) in a longitudinal study increased the number of returned surveys [52].…”