Clinical trial recruitment in primary care: exploratory factor analysis of a questionnaire to measure barriers and facilitators to primary care providers’ involvement

BACKGROUND: Recruitment of sufficient participants for clinical trials remains challenging. Primary care is an important avenue for patient recruitment but is underutilized. We developed and pilot tested a questionnaire to measure relevant barriers and facilitators to primary care providers’ involvement in recruiting patients for clinical trials. METHODS: Prior research informed the development of the questionnaire. The initial instrument was revised using feedback obtained from cognitive interviews. We invited all primary care providers practicing within the University of Utah Health system to complete the revised questionnaire. We used a mixed-mode design to collect paper responses via in-person recruitment and email contacts to collect responses online. Descriptive statistics, exploratory factor analysis, Cronbach’s alpha, and multivariable regression analyses were conducted. RESULTS: Sixty-seven primary care providers participated in the survey. Exploratory factor analysis suggested retaining five factors, representing the importance of clinical trial recruitment in providers’ professional identity, clinic-level interventions to facilitate referral, patient-related barriers, concerns about patient health management, and knowledge gaps. The five factors exhibited good or high internal consistency reliability. Professional identity and clinic-level intervention factors were significant predictors of providers’ intention to participate in clinical trial recruitment activities. CONCLUSIONS: Results of this exploratory analysis provide preliminary evidence of the internal structure, internal consistency reliability, and predictive validity of the questionnaire to measure factors relevant to primary care providers’ involvement in clinical trial recruitment. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12875-022-01898-2.