Recruiting Deaf/ASL- users for Research Participation: Success!

Research about Deaf adults who use sign language has been hampered by difficulty recruiting sufficient numbers of study participants. Traditional recruitment strategies may be ineffective with this population due to communication barriers (hearing loss, American Sign Language/ ASL, limited literacy), cultural barriers and the absence of databases distinguishing adults with hearing loss who use ASL vs those who do not use ASL. There is evidence that Deaf adult/ ASL users have less access to health-related resources than others, though there is no evidence that their need for health resources is less. We are pilot testing the “Signs of Health Intervention”(SoHi) , designed to reduce risk for cardiovascular disease among Deaf adults who are at risk for CVD. SoHi is a 12-week (24 hr) program focusing on heart-healthy nutrition and with weekly walking groups and taught entirely in ASL by a Deaf teacher . We applied recruitment strategies that have been successful with other hard-to-reach linguistic/ethnic minority groups. We recruited Deaf adults from existing Deaf social groups, delivered the intervention to those same social groups at the settings where they were already meeting on a regular basis, in ASL by a Deaf teacher. For example, we recruited participants at two all-Deaf churches, taught the SoHi classes after church each Sunday, and provided heart-healthy food for participants. Participants also met to walk together between classes. An unexpected problem was that some people in the groups did not meet inclusion criteria but wanted to participate with the others in their group.