SPARK: Strategies for PAtient and Recruitment Knowledge
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Patient organisation versus hospital-based recruitment strategies for European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) Quality of Life Group (QLG) studies
IRAS ID
356435
Contact name
Bashir Al-Hashimi
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
King’s College London
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
008/2022, 2125
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 6 months, 31 days
Research summary
Finding the right people for medical studies quickly is crucial. Delays in recruitment can lead to study delays, increased costs, and slower development of new treatments. A large enough participant group is essential for accurate results. Insufficient recruitment may even lead to abandoned research and inconclusive findings.
Using patient organisations (POs) to recruit participants for clinical research studies could be a valuable addition to traditional recruitment methods through hospitals. Patient organisations are groups or charities that support people with specific health conditions, often providing resources, advocacy and a sense of community. Traditional hospital-based recruitment typically involves finding participants through their healthcare providers or in clinics where patients receive their treatment.
While recruitment through POs has potential, there are currently no clear guidelines for effective and reliable strategies. Additionally, it’s unclear whether the participants recruited through POs may differ from those recruited through hospitals. More research is therefore needed to explore these differences and ensure diverse and representative study participation.
Therefore, to address the gaps, we will observe and compare the two groups by:
1. identifying the factors that make recruiting cancer patients through POs easy and/or difficult.
2. checking how similar or different the two groups are in terms of demographic data (such as age, sex, marital status, education), clinical data (such as tumour type and disease stage) and health literacy (how well someone understands and uses health information to make decisions about their care) and
3. assessing patient priorities and concerns
We will also track recruitment progress, including how long it takes to find participants, whether people drop out, how complete the data is, and how much staff is needed.This study will look at two different ways of finding participants to take part in research: through hospitals and through patient organisations (POs). We’ll compare these methods to understand what works best for recruiting patients in the context of studies measuring the quality of life (QoL) of cancer patients.
This study will focus on recruitment through hospitals.REC name
London - Bloomsbury Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
25/LO/0709
Date of REC Opinion
24 Nov 2025
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion