RECRUITMENT RETENTION AND DATA COLLECTION WITH VICTIMS OF ELDER ABUSE IDENTIFIED FROM POLICE REPORTS

摘要

Several methodological issues limit the elder abuseeglect researchers including difficulties with recruitment and enrollment of victims, lack of tools to help retain participants in longitudinal studies, uncertainty regarding what are safety concerns, and appropriate procedures for data collection with victims. Steps to address many of these issues have in turn led to difficulties gaining IRB approval. As such, we planned a project to obtain data on these issues in order to inform planning of a randomized control trial. First, we developed a protocol for coding police narrative reports in order to identify victims, and a three-step process for contacting the victims about study enrollment which included mailers, cold calls, and home visits. To limit bias against homebound or isolated older adults, we developed a data collection protocol which involved home interviews but was flexible in case home interviews posed a safety risk. Furthermore, to limit bias against persons with dementia we developed a protocol for consent capacity assessment and a separate protocol for data collection with proxy respondent-participants. We developed guides for our interviewers intended to protect both the safety of the participant and the safety of our team member in the field. In this presentation, we describe our protocols and discuss their successes and failures in terms of recruitment, retention and data collection with victims. We will also discuss what we learnt about safety concerns, our IRB challenges and the solutions we proposed to obtain approval.