Recruiting and retaining sexual and gender minority couples in intervention research: Lessons learned from trials of tailored relationship education programs

Abstract

Relationship interventions, including healthy relationship education, couple therapy, and dyadic approaches to treating mental and physical health issues, hold promise for promoting relationship and individual health among sexual and gender minority (SGM) populations. Because SGM couples live within a context of societal stigma against their minority identities and relationships, they are likely to be best served by targeted, culturally sensitive relationship interventions that are affirming, free of hetero‐ and cis‐normativity, and address the unique stigma‐based challenges that they face. Therefore, a key goal for the field today is to conduct research evaluating and refining newly developed relationship interventions designed specifically for SGM couples. In this paper, we offer recommendations for effectively recruiting and retaining large, diverse samples of SGM couples for clinical trials of tailored relationship interventions, grounded in guidelines for psychological practice and conducting research with SGM populations. Throughout, we offer examples and lessons learned from our experiences conducting clinical trials of tailored SGM relationship education programs. We encourage the use of recruitment and retention strategies that involve members of the target SGM community from the outset, are informed by knowledge about SGM individuals and relationships, use currently preferred language for individual identities and relationships, attend to issues of confidentiality regarding sexual/gender identity or relationship involvement, and adhere to the norms of the particular community and recruitment venue.

A special section: Recruiting and retaining couples from underrepresented backgrounds in intervention research

“…In this way, couples provide valuable information for the development of the intervention. As involved members of the research process, couples should be compensated for their time as part of the project, not just incentivized as participants (Daire et al, 2023;Whitton et al, 2023;Williamson et al, 2023). 4.…”

“…Similarly, the visuals in your recruitment materials must reflect the people you are wanting to reach, and the website needs to be a welcoming landing site where a potential community member or partner can see themselves and feel at home. Whitton et al (2023) have particularly vivid stories about targeting their visuals to what they know most motivated particular couples that they wanted to reach. For example, couples recruited in clubs responded to different messages than couples recruited in churches.…”

“…If researchers involve community partners from the very beginning of the study, even as early as developing their research questions, they are more likely to design programs with recruitment and retention methods that will be attractive to the community that they are trying to serve. This could make these historically difficult aspects of research a lighter lift (Daire et al, 2023;Tseng et al, 2023;Whitton et al, 2023;Williamson et al, 2023). 3.…”

“…Stories from this collection of papers indicate that what the authors initially thought they should do significantly changed once they began talking directly to the couples they were serving. Asking the people to whom you plan to deliver services first about their relationship experiences, their challenges, their successes, their barriers, and their solutions will ultimately inform better interventions (Daire et al, 2023;Tseng et al, 2023;Whitton et al, 2023;Williamson et al, 2023). This practice requires us to practice both cultural competency and cultural humility (e.g., Bramesfeld et al, 2019).…”

Evidence and couple and family therapy

“…How, in fact, does one get to more inclusiveness in research (and more broadly in couple therapy itself)? Our special section features several papers that help imagine how inclusiveness can be expanded—some from examining efforts in the context of research (Mitchell et al, 2023; Whitton et al, 2023) and others from reimagining how to present couple intervention (Daire et al, 2023; Williamson et al, 2023). Certainly, it is an essential task to ask how to enable better recruitment and participation by a wider range of people in couple therapy research.…”