Abstract
BackgroundRetention of participants in longitudinal prospective surveys can challenging for population health researchers. Community health workers (CHWs) may help reduce attrition.MethodsWe used data came from a longitudinal prospective household-based survey targeting women and men in Rwanda, collected between June 2013 and December 2014. The sample was drawn from a population that included all residents of all 30 districts, 416 sectors, and 14,837 villages in Rwanda. The outcome measure was time to loss-to-follow-up. Follow up visits occurred at three, six and nine, and 12 months. A Cox proportional hazards model was constructed to identify factors independently associated with time to loss-to-follow-up.ResultsOverall, 14,222 respondents consented to be interviewed at baseline. At the end of 12 months of follow up, 13,728 were revisited and consented to participate at 12 months of follow up. The overall attrition rate was 8.0%. A majority of those lost (54.3%) were less than 25 years of age, male (55.1%), not living in union (67.3%), had no education level or had primary education level (71.4%), or were in the highest wealth index (54.2%). Compared to illiterate, secondary education was negatively associated with attrition.ConclusionThe Rwanda AIDS indicator and HIV incidence survey recorded a very high retention of participants after 12 months. CHWs and local leaders played a major role to reduce attrition rate and identifying factors associated with loss-to-follow-up can help CHWs strengthen the quality of longitudinal survey data.
Highlights
Retention of participants in longitudinal prospective surveys can challenging for population health researchers
Boundaries and household members in the selected village were identified by Community health workers (CHWs) and local leaders helping in field data collection
The number of participants retained in the survey was 12,542 (91.4%), 12,750 (92.9%) after nine months, and 12,611 (91.9%) after 12 months of follow up
Summary
Retention of participants in longitudinal prospective surveys can challenging for population health researchers. Community health workers (CHWs) may help reduce attrition. Population-based, longitudinal cohort studies are often time consuming and expensive due to the large financial and human resources requirements for close follow-up of participants [1]. Turnover of participants, leading to attrition, can occur during the period planned for the study. Retention and maintaining contacts with participants in a conventional longitudinal cohort study is challenging and. A systematic review of HIV cohort studies in subSaharan Africa, estimated an average of 22.6% attrition in longitudinal studies, this varies widely across African countries [4]. Retention is challenging in developing settings, CHWs could be integrated to improve retention
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
