• Shannon M Smith, Jennifer S Gewandter, Rachel A Kitt, John D Markman, Janet A Vaughan, Penney Cowan, Ernest A Kopecky, Richard Malamut, Alesia Sadosky, Leslie Tive, Dennis C Turk, and Robert H Dworkin.
• Department of Anesthesiology, University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, Rochester, New York. Electronic address: shannon1_smith@urmc.rochester.edu.
• J Pain. 2016 Nov 1; 17 (11): 1198-1206.

AbstractBarriers to clinical trial recruitment can delay study completion, potentially resulting in increased costs and an unrepresentative sample. In the current study of 150 participants with chronic pain, we used a computerized adaptive choice-based conjoint survey that included 8 characteristics that may affect enrollment in pharmacologic pain treatment trials (ie, treatment allocation, frequency of pain ratings, treatment administration method, current medications, number of study visits, availability of evening and weekend visits, invasiveness of laboratory procedures, payment). These data were analyzed using Sawtooth Software ver. 8.4.8 (Sawtooth Software, Inc, Orem, UT), which identifies the characteristics that dominate participants' decisions across multiple sets of potential trials. Three characteristics had the largest relative importance in participants' trial preferences: 1) invasiveness of required laboratory procedures (ie, 22%), with no procedures or blood tests preferred over ice-water sensory testing or skin biopsy; 2) ability to continue current pain medications (21%); and 3) payment for study participation (21%), with higher payment preferred. The fourth most important characteristic was number of study visits (13%), with participants preferring fewer in-person visits and more phone contacts. Understanding the preferences of potential participants is an important step toward enhancing enrollment in pain treatment trials.Copyright © 2016 American Pain Society. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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