Analysis of compliance and retention for the PLCO cohort
Principal Investigator
About this CDAS Project
Study
PLCO
(Learn more about this study)
Project ID
2011-0090
Initial CDAS Request Approval
Jun 6, 2011
Title
Analysis of compliance and retention for the PLCO cohort
Summary
The National Children's Study (NCS) is a longitudinal study of the effect of environment and genetics on child health that aims to enroll a large cohort of children and follow their health and development from pre-birth to age 21. Findings from the NCS are expected to advance the scientific understanding of a wide range of health conditions and be applicable to a diverse population. To meet this expectation the study must recruit and retain a suitable sample of participants from which statistically valid conclusions can be drawn and generalized to the whole population. Minimizing dropout rates and ensuring high levels of participant compliance with study visits and data collection will be challenging. Because of the long duration of the study, unanticipated problems with retention or compliance could compromise the validity of the results. In order to avoid this scenario we plan to leverage the knowledge gained in conducting other long, longitudinal studies in the planning stages of the NCS. Specifically, we propose analyze operational data from the PLCO, such as dropout rates and rates of compliance with data collection events, in order to anticipate the level compliance and retention that can be expected in the NCS.
Aims
1. Determine the rate of withdrawals from the PLCO cohort and how this rate varies over time and as a function of the characteristics of individual participants, such as age, race and socio-economic status. We define withdrawal to mean events when a participant explicitly drops out of the study, asking not to be contacted any longer. 2. Determine the rates of partial- or non-compliance with study visits and how these rates vary over time and across the participant population. We define compliance as the degree to which participants complete scheduled data collections, surveys and other study instruments or events.
Collaborators
Anjene Addington (Booz Allen Hamilton)
Juergen Klenk (Booz Allen Hamilton)
Brendan Murphy (Booz Allen Hamilton)