Strategies to retain adolescent study participants in longitudinal teen pregnancy prevention studies

Implementation of high quality, rigorous studies in the field of adolescent health is imperative to build the evidence-base about what works and does not work in preventing teen pregnancy. This presentation targets public health professionals and researchers who are implementing and actively engaged in data collection for rigorous longitudinal studies of teen pregnancy prevention curricula. It will focus on best practices to improve adolescent study participant retention rates at follow-up data collection points.

The presentation will discuss evidence-based practices related to participant retention, specifically the Engagement, Verification, Maintenance, and Confirmation Protocol, designed to achieve high follow-up rates among youth enrolled in longitudinal studies. It will then describe the real-life application of these practices within the context of teen pregnancy prevention research being conducted in an urban environment with a primarily African American adolescent population. The presenter will share how these practices have been used and adapted to achieve high retention rates among youths enrolled in a longitudinal randomized control trial (RCT). Summary results of a focus group conducted with adolescent RCT pilot participants about these retention strategies will also be shared. The presenter's goal is to ensure that participants not only learn about evidence-based practices and their real-life applications, but also recognize how these models and other solutions or strategies can address the specific barriers they may be experiencing in their longitudinal studies. Participants will acquire skills that will have an immediate impact on the quality and quantity of the data collected for their longitudinal studies.