RECRUITMENT STRATEGIES FOR SCHOOL-HEALTH PROMOTION RESEARCH

The initial step of a 4 year study of the diffusion of a school-based tobacco prevention program was the recruitment of school districts to participate in the data collection required by the study. The literature on recruitment almost without exception concerns recruiting individual subjects not organizations into a study. Since no model for recruiting school districts existed, strategies from both the clinical trials and survey research literature were used to design the recruitment plan for this study. This paper presents the methods used to recruit school districts into a 4 year study. The combined strategy of personal visits and direct mailing with telephone follow-up was successful in recruiting 132 out of the 166 districts (80%) that were targeted for inclusion in the study. Recommendations for recruiting school districts are discussed. © 1991 Oxford University Press.