Evidence Summary
What is it?
Instead of the standard follow-up procedures, participants receive a telephone call.
Does it work?
Telephone reminders compared to usual follow‐up may result in little or no difference to retention.
How big is the effect?
A decrease of -1% (95% confidence interval = -18% to 15%).
How certain are we?
GRADE Low certainty.
Recommendation
We recommend that trialists use telephone reminders instead of usual follow-up in the context of an intervention evaluation.
How can I use this straight away?
See Resource bundle below for support materials.
Practical Impact
Imagine initial retention is 65% of those approached. You have a trial with 100 participants that needs responses from 80 to meet its statistical power calculations. Retention of 65% means that you will be 15 responses short (see chart below).
Now imagine using telephone reminders instead of usual follow-up. The chart below shows the impact of an absolute increase of -11% (95% CI = -18% to 15%). Retention is now 64%, which means our best estimate is that you would now be 16 responses short.
Cumulative Meta-Analysis*
*Random effects model done using Comprehensive Meta-Analysis v4 (www.meta-analysis.com).
Differences >0% favour the intervention. The GRADE assessment is low because of the imprecision of a single study.
Resource Bundle
How to Cite
Citation: Ostrovska B. Evidence pack– Retention: Telephone reminders instead of usual follow-up (RET23), 2023, https://www.trialforge.org/retention-sector/telephone-reminders-instead-of-usual-follow-up-id-ret23/.
More Information
- This summary is from the Cochrane review of strategies to improve retention in randomised trials (https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.MR000032.pub3/full).
- The ‘Does it work?’ statement is structured according to effect size and GRADE certainty as per GRADE Guidelines 26 (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclinepi.2019.10.014). The statement is for trivial effect size and Low GRADE certainty.
- The recommendation statement is the consensus view of the authors of this summary based on the GRADE certainty and features of the trials contributing to the evidence.
- If you have any questions contact info@trialforge.org.
