Would You be Happy to be Contacted About Research?

Would You be Happy to be Contacted About Research?

The aim of this study is to re-examine the proportion of primary care patients that would be happy to be contacted about research of relevance to them. This study will examine the utility of SMS messages sent to patients by their general practice, with a link URL to an online questionnaire containing five research questions.

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019, the NIHR has played a critical role in the fight against this new disease with the delivery of COVID-19 research studies. Taking part in COVID-19 research is vital to enable effective treatments to be identified, evidenced and made available to NHS patients as quickly as possible. Over 100,000 UK participants have now enrolled in COVID-19 urgent public health research supported by the NIHR.

Keele Clinical Trials Unit (CTU) quickly implemented online data collection methodologies during 2020, in order to continue with recruitment of and retention of research participants and in response to the national lockdown and tiered systems implemented for protection of the population during the pandemic. There is now opportunity, to re-evaluate the proportion of primary care patients that would be happy to be contacted about research of relevance and also to assess the utility of online technologies, in particular SMS text messaging and an online survey platform, in the collection of the research data.

The specific research objectives of this study are:

1. To examine patient response rates to an invitation to complete an online Keele Health Survey questionnaire, delivered by SMS message from their general practice,
2. To examine the difference in patient response rates to the invitation to participate in the research study with and without a precursor test message (SMS).
3. To estimate the number of patients that would be happy to be contacted about future research studies relevant to their health.
4. To explore any demographic variances in completion responses.
5. To estimate research question completion rate feasibility, for future use of SMS messages containing a link URL to an online Keele Health Survey questionnaire to collect research data.

Inclusion Criteria:

• Age - 18 years or over
• Mobile telephone number must be registered at general practice (doctor's surgery)

Exclusion Criteria:

• Anyone under the age of 18
• Anyone who does not have their mobile phone number registered with their general practice (doctor's surgery)