What Works? An Empirical Perspective on How to Retain Youth in Longitudinal Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and Substance Risk Reduction Studies

ABSTRACT

Background: Low retention rates are a problem for longitudinal studies involving adolescents, and this is particularly true for justice-involved youth. Methods: This study evaluates (1) strategies used to retain high-risk adolescents participating in a longitudinal research project; (2) the extent to which retention efforts were different in a justice-involved versus a non–justice-involved (school-based) sample; and (3) differential characteristics of justice-involved versus school-based adolescents that might explain differences in retention difficulty. Results: Compared with the school-based youth, justice-involved youth required significantly more phone calls to be successfully reached. Additionally, baseline substance use (alcohol and marijuana use frequency) was higher in the justice-involved sample and significantly related to retention difficulty. Conclusions: High retention rates for justice-involved and substance-using youth are possible with focused efforts on frequent communication and effortful contact.

Keywords:

• Alcohol
• adolescents
• HIV prevention
• marijuana
• retention

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Additional thanks are due to Tiffany Callahan, Roberto Caze, Sean Gonzales, Patrick Ewell, Katie Riggelman-Thomas, and Shelley Adamson for their assistance with data collection.

Funding

This research was supported by National Institutes of Health grants R01 AA017390; PI: A.B., and 1R01 AA017878-01A2; PI: S.F.E. The project described was supported by award T32MH020031 from the National Institute of Mental Health. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institute of Mental Health or the National Institutes of Health. The authors declare that they have no competing financial or other conflicts of interest relating to the data included in the manuscript. The study sponsor was not involved in study design, the collection, analysis, or interpretation of data, the writing of the report, or the decision to submit the manuscript for publication. No honorarium, grant, or other payment was given to anyone to produce this manuscript.