Strategies to recruit difficult-to-reach home health care nurses for research☆

Received 11 September 2009; received in revised form 29 January 2010; accepted 3 February 2010. published online 12 April 2010.
Corrected Proof

Abstract

Strategies to access a stratified random sample of New England home health care agencies and nurses are described. The combined strategies resulted in a sample of 123 home health care agencies and 2,459 home healthcare nurses from the six New England states. The results will inform researchers aiming to achieve data representativeness and clinicians critiquing the rigor of evidence.

a University of Southern Maine, College of Nursing and Health Professions, P.O. Box 9300, Portland, ME 04104, USA

b University of Massachusetts Boston, College of Nursing and Health Sciences, Boston, MA 02025, USA

Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 207 780 4437; fax: +1 207 780 4997.

☆ The Nurse Retention Study was funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (R01 HS 13477-03).

PII: S0897-1897(10)00007-8

doi:10.1016/j.apnr.2010.02.002