Improving retention of community-recruited participants in HIV prevention research through Saturday household visits; findings from the HPTN 071 (PopART) study in South Africa

Abstract

Background Identifying successful strategies to improve participant retention in longitudinal studies remains a challenge. In this study we evaluated whether non-traditional fieldworker shifts (after hours during the week and weekends) enhanced participant retention when compared to retention during traditional weekday shifts in the HPTN 071 (PopART) population cohort (PC). Methods HPTN 071 (PopART) PC participants were recruited and followed up in their homes on an annual basis by research fieldworkers over a 3-4 year period. The average number of successful follow-up visits, where a PC participant was found and retained in the study, was calculated for each of 3 visit schedules (early weekday shift, late weekday shift, and Saturday shift), and standardized to account for variation in fieldwork shift duration. We used one-way univariate analysis of variance (ANOVA) to describe differences in mean-successful visits and 95% confidence intervals between the shift types. Results Data on 16 651 successful visits were included. Successful visit rates were higher when conducting Saturday visits (14.0; 95% CI: 11.3-16.6) compared to both regular (4.5; 95% CI: 3.7-5.3) and late weekday shifts (5.3; 95% CI: 4.7-5.8) overall and in all subgroup analyses (P