Developing Recruitment Methods for Vulnerable,Traumatized Adolescents

Abstract

This article describes the process by which we created a recruitment protocol for engaging adolescent sexual assault victims in a qualitative evaluation study. Working in collaboration with forensic nurses, rape victim advocates, adolescent rape survivors, and our institutional review board (IRB), we created a prospective recruitment method whereby adolescent victims were given information about the evaluation project at the time of postassault treatment services, but data collection was deferred until the trauma of the assault had a chance to diminish. In-person qualitative interviews were conducted with 25 clients at the treatment programs approximately 10 weeks after the assault. Although we recruited only a small number of youth (21% of the eligible sample), the methods were sufficient to achieve saturation, and comparisons to the agencies’ quantitative records suggest that the interview sample was not different from program population norms. We examine why some teens chose not to participate and provide recommendations for recruiting hard-to-find, vulnerable, and/or traumatized adolescent populations.