Recruitment and Retention

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The primary purpose of the Recruitmcnt and Retention Core is to develop and maintain a cohort of adolescents and their parents for use in all projects, and to ensure the smooth flow of subjects across projects and over time. The specific functions of the core are to: 1) recruit 18 high schools to participate in the study by allowing the core to screen and identify eligible 9 th and 10 th graders for participation; 2) to maintain good relationships with the high schools throughout the course of the study; 3) to conduct informed consents and coordinate IRB matters across projects; 4) to conduct initial screenings of adolescents at schools to identify students eligible for the longitudinal study; 5) to recruit eligible adolescents and their parents into the projects; 6) to administer and collect all common paper and pencil questionnaire measures (baseline through 36 months), as well as cotinine samples from adolescents at 30 months; 7) to track and locate missing adolescents and parents as they move; 8) to coordinate the subject flow and timing of subject participation for those involved in more than one project; 9) to help maintain smooth coordination of data flow from this core to the Data Management, Measurement, and Statistics Core; and 10) to implement panel strategies to reduce attrition over the course of the study. We will use a combination of recruitment and retention procedures developed from our current work with an adolescent sample (in which we have successfully achieved all recruitment goals and retained more than 90% of a cohort through an 18-month follow-up), which requires good relationships with schools, parents, and adolescent-sensitive procedures.