ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Digit. Health
Sec. Human Factors and Digital Health
Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fdgth.2025.1520132
This article is part of the Research TopicOptimising Participant Recruitment in Digital Health ResearchView all 6 articles
Retention and Characteristics Associated With Remote Questionnaire Completion in a General Population Cohort Study: The Project Baseline Health Study
Provisionally accepted
Megan Kathrine Carroll1*
Safa Faheem1
Jean Bouteiller1Adrian Hernandez2Kenneth W Mahaffey3Jessica L Mega1Neha Pagidipati2Terry Schaack4Svati H Shah2Sumana Shashidhar3Susan Swope3Williams Donna3
Scooter Plowman1Edgar P Simard1
Sarah Short1
Shannon Sullivan1- 1Verily Life Sciences, South San Francisco, CA, United States
- 2Duke University Medical Center, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, United States
- 3Stanford Department of Medicine, Stanford School of Medicine, Stanford, California, United States
- 4California Health and Longevity Institute, Westlake, United States
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Objective: To evaluate remote participant engagement in a clinical study over time, based on data from the Project Baseline Health Study (PBHS), a hybrid in-person and virtual study. Methods: The PBHS enrolled 2502 adult US residents from 3/30/2017 to 4/26/2019, with a ≤5-year follow-up. We summarized 4-year retention and rates of longitudinal patient-reported outcome survey completion. We investigated participant characteristics for their associations with quarterly remote survey completion using regression models. Results: Of the total participants (N=2502), 94% remained enrolled after 4 years and 60% completed all annual visits; 2490 participants stayed enrolled for at least one quarter. The median (IQR) number of remote electronic survey sets completed was 8 (3-12), of a possible 16. Age (odds ratio [OR], >70 vs. ≤30 years: 2.56; 95% CI: 2.24-2.94) and education (OR, advanced degree vs. ≤high school: 1.36; 95% CI: 1.22-1.52) were positively associated with remote survey completion. Participants with lower odds of completion were Black (OR vs. White: 0.73; 95% CI: 0.67-0.80), Hispanic (OR vs. non-Hispanic: 0.84; 95% CI: 0.77-0.93), or had at least mild symptoms of depression (OR vs. without: 0.90; 95% CI: 0.84-0.96) or anxiety (OR vs. without: 0.84; 95% CI: 0.78-0.90). Conclusions: Overall, 94% of PBHS participants remained enrolled after four years. Age, race, ethnicity, income, education, and symptomatic depression/anxiety were significantly associated with longitudinal remote questionnaire completion. These findings on engagement over time may inform future longitudinal study design.
Keywords: research participant engagement, Participant retention, remote trial, cohort study, patient-reported outcomes, social determinants of health, Project Baseline Health Study, PBHS
Received: 30 Oct 2024; Accepted: 02 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Carroll, Faheem, Bouteiller, Hernandez, Mahaffey, Mega, Pagidipati, Schaack, Shah, Shashidhar, Swope, Donna, Plowman, Simard, Short and Sullivan. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Megan Kathrine Carroll, Verily Life Sciences, South San Francisco, CA, United States
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.