Keeping Families in the Study Posted on March 14, 2006 J. Steven Reznick (bio) talks about what he has done to retain families in longitudinal studies.

To keep families in studies, that becomes a complicated question in that why is the family in the study to begin with. There are some families that are in the study because they're interested in doing their part to help us learn more about babies. They have tremendous motivation, and you just pat them on the back, tell them they're doing a great job, and there they are.

There are other families that are under economic pressures, and even if they wanted to do that, don't have the time and energy. So at the other extreme, there are situations where we are simply paying people to do this. For a long-term longitudinal study where you want a very broad sample, you almost have to do that in modern America.

Along the way, we like to reward the infant by giving them a little gift, and parents appreciate that. There was a time in a previous lab where we gave the infants a Yale T-shirt, and the parents loved that, but in the modern world, property rights and insignias become not so easily given away, so we dropped that. Now we give the babies a gift and compensate parents if they need it to travel. We don't want someone to lose money on the opportunity.

One other thing in longitudinal work that is important is allowing the families to feel invested in the project, and that can be accomplished through things like newsletters. We're currently doing a longitudinal study in Durham where we send out every six months or so a seasonal update. We know the age child that the parents have, so we can talk about things that are relevant for the holidays, opportunities for the summer, that sort of stuff. Parents are often interested in findings, and so sharing with them what's going on in the project. Making them truly stakeholders is another good way to encourage.

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