Giving quotes from existing trial participants in text messages.
Giving quotes from existing participants in text messages probably increases recruitment slightly.
An increase of 4% (95% confidence interval = 2% to 6%).
GRADE Moderate certainty.
We suggest that trialists consider using text messaging #2: quotes from participants, ideally as part of a SWAT evaluation.
See Resource bundle below for details of how to use text messaging #2: quotes from participants or build a SWAT evaluation of them into your trial.
Imagine a trial that needs to recruit 30 participants and initial recruitment is 30% of those approached. This means you’d need to approach 100 people to recruit 30 of them (see chart).
Now imagine sending participant quotes as text messages. The chart below shows the impact of an absolute increase of 4% (95% CI = 2% to 6%). Recruitment is now 34%, which means our best estimate is that 88 people would now need to be approached to recruit 30 of them.