Recruiting Wheelchair Users for an Exercise Intervention

This poster presents preliminary recruitment data on sedentary wheelchair users (n=123) for a RCT which tests a multi-component intervention to adopt and maintain a community-based exercise program, with six months of support followed by six months of exercise monitoring via exercise logs.

Effective recruitment sources included information distributed by medical providers (24%), service agencies (19%), media (11%) and acquaintances (11%). Common disability types of those screened for eligibility included neurological (78%), orthopedic (9%), autoimmune (6%) and chronic disease (4%), with individuals with SCI comprising a large percentage (42%) of those with neurological disorders. Based on eligibility criteria, 66/123 (53%) individuals were deemed eligible. The most frequent ineligibility reasons included lack of wheelchair use (16%), contraindicated medical conditions (7%), cognitive impairments (5%), high activity levels (4%), and being over the age limit (3%)

We examined whether there were significant differences between eligible individuals who initiated the program (n=51) and non-initiators (n=15). A Mann-Whitney U test, used because of the substantial difference in group sizes, revealed that the mean ages of initiators (M=40.2, SD=12.74) and non-initiators (M=42.5, SD= 13.99) were not significantly different (p=.64). Chi Square tests revealed no significant differences between the two groups regarding variables of gender (p=.56), race (White or other) (p=.38) or disability (neurological or other) (p=1.0).

Recruiting wheelchair users for a 12-month RCT exercise study is labor-intensive, as nearly half of those screened were ineligible. Furthermore, about 23% of eligible individuals did not initiate the study. Effective outreach strategies between the screening and study initiation are needed.