Effect on Response Rates of Adding a QR Code to Patient Consent Forms for Qualitative Research in Patients With Cancer: Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: The successful conduct of health and medical research is largely dependent on participant recruitment. Effective, yet inexpensive methods of increasing response rates for all types of research are required. QR codes are now commonplace, and despite having been extensively used to recruit study participants, a search of the literature failed to reveal any randomized trial investigating the effect of adding a QR code on qualitative research response rates. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to collect data on rates of response, consent, and decline among patients with cancer, and the average time taken to respond following randomization to receive either a QR code or no QR code on the patient consent form for a qualitative research study. METHODS: This was a pilot randomized controlled trial (RCT) embedded within a qualitative research study. In total, 40 eligible patients received a recruitment pack for the qualitative study, which included an information statement, a consent form, and an addressed, stamped envelope to return their consent form. Patients were randomized 1:1 to the control (standard recruitment pack only) or intervention group (standard recruitment pack including modified consent form with a QR code). RESULTS: In total, 27 out of 40 patients (age: mean 63.0, SD 14.8 years; 45% female) responded to the consent form. A lower proportion of the QR code group (60%) responded (odd ratio [OR] 0.57, 95% CI 0.14-2.37; P=.44), compared to 75% of the standard recruitment group. However, a higher proportion of the QR group (35%) consented (OR 1.84, 95% CI 0.41-8.29; P=.43), compared to the standard recruitment group (20%). A lower proportion of the QR group (25%) declined (OR 0.34, 95% CI 0.09-1.38; P=.13) relative to the standard recruitment group (55%). The mean response time of the QR code group was 16 days (rate ratio [RR] 0.79, 95% CI 0.47-1.35; P=.39) compared to 19 days for the standard recruitment group. None of the age-adjusted analyses were statistically significant. CONCLUSIONS: This underpowered pilot study did not find any evidence that offering an option to respond through a QR code on a patient consent form for a qualitative study increased the overall patient response rate (combined rate of consent and decline). However, there was a nonsignificant trend, indicating that more patients who received the QR code consented compared to those who did not receive the QR code. This study provides useful preliminary data on the potential impact of QR codes on patient response rates to invitations to participate in qualitative research and can be used to inform fully powered RCTs. TRIAL REGISTRATION: OSF Registries 10.17605/OSF.IO/PJ25X; https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/PJ25X.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.093 | 0.177 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.005 | 0.006 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.005 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.026 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".