Enrolling middle school staff in the CSTOP Now! cRCT to prevent child sex trafficking: preliminary effectiveness of recruitment strategies

Abstract

Child sex trafficking (CST) has significant, long-term health consequences for children and their families. Given higher risk of CST for middle school-aged children, the significant time spent by students in schools under staff supervision, and the opportunity to provide CST prevention programming to school staff, our team developed and launched the cluster randomized controlled trial (cRCT), CSTOP Now!. The purpose of this investigation is to examine the effectiveness of recruitment strategies to enroll middle school staff into the cRCT. Both training conditions were delivered through an asynchronous online learning management system to school staff. A two-stage recruitment began with 50 counties randomly assigned to intervention or attention control conditions. Administrators in middle schools within these counties were contacted and invited into the cRCT; 37 middle schools joined the cRCT. Six school-level staff recruitment strategies were used and evaluated for effectiveness in enrolling participants. The most effective strategy was champion recruitment (69% of 127 invited enrolled via this strategy), followed by direct email invitations from study personnel to school staff (20% enrolled from 1621 invited). Some school administrators opted to provide global links to staff; approximately 11% enrolled of 447 invited via this method. Prepaid incentive mailers enrolled 3.7% of 1774 invited, while mailers without cash enrolled 0.4% of 1122 invited. A geofenced advertising campaign resulted in 1,068 individuals accessing the study signup webform, yet no school staff joined via this recruitment strategy. These data can inform others’ approach to recruitment in school settings. Multiple strategies were needed because school-based recruitment remains challenging in the post-COVID-19 era due to greater demands on fewer school staff. This clinical trial is registered at clinicaltrials.gov (NCT05722769), last updated 10/14/2024.