Engaging adolescents in contemporary longitudinal health research: strategies for promoting participation and retention

Purpose: High (and non-selective) recruitment and retention rates in longitudinal studies of adolescence are essential for illuminating health trajectories and determinants during this critical period of development. Knowledge of optimal recruitment and retention strategies must keep pace with emerging challenges and opportunities, such as the shifts towards digitally-based data collection. Methods: We used a narrative review approach to synthesise research on promising recruitment and retention strategies for optimising engagement for the next generation of longitudinal adolescent health studies. Results: We identified a small number of well-evidenced strategies, emerging challenges and opportunities for recruitment and retention in contemporary studies, and key evidence gaps. Core recommendations include the use of well-evidenced strategies (e.g., incentivising participation, reducing barriers and burden, and investing in building positive relationships with participants) and co-producing recruitment and retention strategies with adolescents and parents of adolescents. Conclusion: More research is needed into successful recruitment/retention strategies for digital/remote data collection methods but initial evidence suggests that adopting principle and adapting well-evidenced strategies from traditional longitudinal studies is promising.