Recruiting families into an intervention study can be difficult. The Helping Children Achieve Trial aimed to recruit 240 families from the London Borough of Hackney and Plymouth. Families with a child aged 5-7 with antisocial behaviour were invited to take part in a trial to test which of four interventions were most effective in reducing the risk of antisocial behaviour and improving literacy.
Finding families who met the criteria for inclusion and then were willing to take part in the intervention was challenging. To meet the target of 240 families, over 3000 families were screened to see if they met the criteria for inclusion. This makes the trial one of the biggest ever surveys of primary school aged children‟s antisocial behaviour in inner city areas in the UK.