Abstract
The development and testing of culturally competent interventions relies on the recruitment and retention of ethnic minority populations. Minority immigrants are a population of keen interest given their widespread growth, needs, and contributions to communities in which they settle, and particularly recent immigrants from Mexico and Central and South American countries. However, recruitment and retention strategies for entirely immigrant samples are rarely discussed in the literature. The current article describes lessons learned from two family-focused longitudinal prevention research studies of Latino immigrants in Oregon—the Adolescent Latino Acculturation Study (ALAS) and the Latino Youth and Family Empowerment Project-II (LYFE-II). Social, legal, economic, and political contexts are considered that shape Latino immigrants’ experiences in their home countries as well as in the United States. The implications of these contexts for effective recruitment and retention strategies are discussed.
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Acknowledgments
The authors thank the Oregon Latino families who participated in the study and study assessors. The project described was supported by Award Numbers R01 DA017937 and R01 DA019654 from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institute on Drug Abuse or the National Institutes of Health.
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Support for this project was provided by Grants No. R01 DA017937 and R01 DA01965 (Charles R. Martinez, Jr., Principal Investigator) from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, U.S. PHS.
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Martinez, C.R., McClure, H.H., Eddy, J.M. et al. Recruitment and Retention of Latino Immigrant Families in Prevention Research. Prev Sci 13, 15–26 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11121-011-0239-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11121-011-0239-0