Recruitment, Retention, and Blinding in Clinical Trials
Open accessAbstract
The recruitment and retention of participants and the blinding of participants, health care providers, and data collectors present challenges for clinical trial investigators. This article reviews challenges and alternative strategies associated with these three important clinical trial activities. Common recruiting pitfalls, including low sample size, unfriendly study designs, suboptimal testing locations, and untimely recruitment are discussed together with strategies for overcoming these barriers. The use of active controls, technology-supported visit reminders, and up-front scheduling is recommended to prevent attrition and maximize retention of participants. Blinding is conceptualized as the process of concealing research design elements from key players in the research process. Strategies for blinding participants, health care providers, and data collectors are suggested.
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Approaches to managing communication within the team overlap with those reported in previous studies.
“These approaches overlap with those reported in previous studies [8, 14, 18, 19, 23] and reflect the many considerations required to ensure blinding of outcome assessors.”
From Blinding outcome assessors in randomised controlled trials of psychological interventions: how is it done? A narrative review (2026) · cites this paper as [8]
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References 28 · Cited by 148
- Authors
- Page, S. J., & Persch, A. C.
- Affiliations
- The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center (US)
- Venue
- American Journal of Occupational Therapy
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2013-03
- Volume
- 67
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 154-161
- ISSN
- 0272-9490 (ISSN-L)
- 1943-7676
- PMC
- PMC3722651
- OpenAlex
- W2072226807
- Cited by
- 148
- References
- 28
- Citations by year
- 2026: 4 · 2025: 14 · 2024: 14 · 2023: 11 · 2022: 14 · 2021: 19 · 2020: 21 · 2019: 13 · 2018: 9 · 2017: 11 · 2016: 5 · 2015: 9 · 2014: 2 · 2013: 2
- FWCI
- 6.12
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- American Journal of Occupational Therapy (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Ethics in Clinical Research
- Physical Sciences › Mathematics › Statistics and Probability › Statistical Methods in Clinical Trials
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › Health Information Management › Methodologies in Health Research and Practice
- Keywords
- clinical trial recruitment, participant retention, blinding, attrition, active control, scheduling, research design, sample size, occupational therapy research
- MeSH terms
- Appointments and Schedules, Clinical Trials as Topic, Double-Blind Method, Humans, Occupational Therapy, Patient Compliance, Single-Blind Method, Reminder Systems, Patient Selection
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