Supporting participation in clinical research: decision aids for trial recruitment?

Supporting participation in clinical research: decision aids for trial recruitment?Much work has been done in recent decades to ensure that participation in clinical research is informed and voluntary, but assessments of the quality of participant information sheets, recruitment consultations and participantsÕ understanding of research studies continue to suggest there is scope for improvement.In this issue of Health Expectations, Juraskova et al. 1 report on a preliminary assessment of a decision aid for women invited to participate in a randomized controlled trial comparing two drugs for the prevention of breast cancer following treatment for ductal carcinoma in situ.We think this is one of the first published reports of a resource developed explicitly as a decision aid for people facing decisions about trial participation (some participant information sheets might ÔcountÕ as decision aids on some definitions, but they have generally not emphasized the comparison and choice between participation and non-participation as options).In Juraskova et al.Õs study, the decision aid was judged favourably and deemed helpful by the women who reviewed it.It seemed to aid understanding without provoking anxiety.This suggests that decision aids for research participation decisions -we might call them Ôresearch recruitment decision aidsÕ -merit further investigation.Many of the issues that need to be addressed during the development and evaluation of research recruitment decision aids are similar to those that have arisen during the development and evaluation of treatment decision aids (aids for people facing decisions about treatment or