TY  - JOUR
AU  - Ko, Eunjung
AU  - Gao, Ye
AU  - Wang, Peng
AU  - Wijayasingha, Lahiru
AU  - Wright, Kathy D
AU  - Gordon, Kristina C
AU  - Wang, Hongning
AU  - Stankovic, John A
AU  - Rose, Karen M
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/1/17
TI  - Recruitment Challenges and Strategies in a Technology-Based Intervention for Dementia Caregivers: Descriptive Study
JO  - JMIR Form Res
SP  - e59291
VL  - 9
KW  - recruitment challenges and strategies
KW  - technology-based intervention
KW  - dementia caregivers
KW  - dementia
KW  - mobile phone
KW  - Alzheimer disease
KW  - smart health
AB  - Background: Researchers have encountered challenges in recruiting unpaid caregivers of people living with Alzheimer disease and related dementias for intervention studies. However, little is known about the reasons for nonparticipation in in-home smart health interventions in community-based settings. Objective: This study aimed to (1) assess recruitment rates in a smart health technology intervention for caregivers of people living with Alzheimer disease and related dementias and reasons for nonparticipation among them and (2) discuss lessons learned from recruitment challenges and strategies to improve recruitment. Methods: The smart health intervention was a 4-month, single-arm trial designed to evaluate an in-home, technology-based intervention that monitors stressful moments for caregiving dyads through acoustic signals and to provide the caregivers with real-time stress management strategies. The recruitment involved two main methods: on-site engagement by a recruiter from a memory clinic and social media advertising. Caregivers were screened for eligibility by phone between January 2021 and September 2023. The recruitment rates, reasons for nonparticipation, and participant demographics were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Results: Of 201 caregivers contacted, 11 were enrolled in this study. Eighty-two caregivers did not return the screening call, and others did not participate due to privacy concerns (n=30), lack of interest (n=29), and burdensome study procedures (n=26). Our recruitment strategies included addressing privacy concerns, visualizing collected data through a dashboard, boosting social media presence, increasing the recruitment budget, updating advertisements, and preparing and deploying additional study devices. Conclusions: This study highlighted barriers to participation in the smart health intervention. Despite several recruitment strategies, enrollment rates remained below expectations. These findings underscore the need for future research to explore alternative methods for increasing the recruitment of informal dementia caregivers in technology-based intervention studies. Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT04536701; https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT04536701 International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID): RR2-10.1111/jan.14714 
SN  - 2561-326X
UR  - https://formative.jmir.org/2025/1/e59291
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2196/59291
DO  - 10.2196/59291
ID  - info:doi/10.2196/59291
ER  -