Dr. Namyeon Lee, an assistant professor in the department of Mass Communication at UNCP, has published a study with two other authors about the effects of source credibility and racial representation in flyers designed to recruit participants for medical research.

An experiment administered online to 300 participants involved flyers that varied by race of the person featured in the message (Black or white) and by status of the person featured in the message (doctor or peer). Peers (who also varied by race) were people who had participated in the clinical trial that was being advertised. The flyers also varied by clinical trial, such as a sleep study, an alcohol study, and a physical activity intervention.

Lee was second author, with first author Dr. Sungkyoung Lee at University of Missouri and Dr. Ciera Kirkpatrick at University of Nebraska–Lincoln. Published in the journal Health Communication, their article is entitled, “Effects of Communication Source and Racial Representation in Clinical Trial Recruitment Flyers.”

“Data from clinical trials inform us how people respond to medical interventions and therefore guide how the interventions may best be used. For that reason, it is important for clinical trials to include individuals of all demographics that can represent the general population,” Lee said.

“However, the clinical trials are usually overrepresented with White participants, and minorities such as African Americans have been underrepresented. We hoped to develop public health messages that may improve attitudes towards clinical trials, especially among African American participants,” she explained.

The study found that peer-featured flyers that used former clinical trial participants to share their experiences tended to be perceived as more credible and more relevant than doctor-featured flyers. Peer-featured flyers also generated more favorable attitudes toward clinical trials and higher intentions to participate in future trials. Additionally, both white and Black readers in the experiment rated racially mismatched peer messages as more effective.

The authors noted that the peer-featured flyers used females, and the doctor-featured flyers used males, so gender may be a variable of interest in future experiments. But, in general, the authors recommend the use of “similar others” as a persuasive communication source in clinical trial recruitment messaging.

“I think the challenge we have is how to convey trust and credibility in a single flyer,” Lee said. “We wanted to test which one is more effective in terms of building trust: the medical doctors’ expertise or the testimonials from previous participants.

“It turns out that the testimonials are consistently more effective. The readers probably found the testimonials from real people as more transparent and comfortable. Also, even if displaying a diverse and inclusive image of a person may seem to be a surface-level effort, it is not. It resulted in increased relevant perceptions throughout, both about the ad and about the clinical trials.”