A systematic review of non-randomised evaluations of strategies to improve participant recruitment to randomised controlled trials: data extraction, interpretation and reporting

Clinical trials are important but recruiting participants is hard; around half fail to recruit enough. This means the health benefits the trial set out to deliver may be delayed while more trials are done.  The treatment may simply be abandoned. There is research on strategies to improve recruitment but most of it has been ignored.  The project will extract data from these research studies (over 200), collate and interpret the results and summarise them in a useful form for trial designers.  This new evidence will improve the chances that a trial will answer its research question and deliver health benefits.