Recruiting RA Patients Who Reflect Real Life: Quotas for a Five-City Needs Study
Two quotas ensured the sample reflected how RA affects working life and that well-controlled patients didn't skew it towards mild.
A pharmaceutical company wanted to understand the needs of people with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) to guide planning for its immunology pipeline, including which patient types might benefit most from new options.
The brief called for 60-minute in-person interviews in Chicago, New York, London, Paris and Berlin, across five research days.
Screening criteria:
Diagnosed with RA at least six months ago
Managed by a rheumatologist
Moderate to severe at diagnosis
On prescription therapy, split roughly evenly between advanced therapies and DMARDs
Aged 18 to 65
No significant comorbidities, such as cancer or serious mental health conditions
Two quotas shaped the sample. No more than a third of patients could be unemployed, including retired patients and those on disability, so the impact of RA on work stayed in the discussion. And because effective treatment can make patients appear mild, no more than 40% per interview day could currently be considered mild.
Soft quotas covered a mix of age, income and gender.
Before their interview, patients completed a homework exercise in which they chose images that showed how RA had affected their lives. Moderators used these as a starting point, then moved to scenario and good-day/bad-day exercises.
The study ran alongside parallel patient needs studies in other inflammatory arthritis conditions, using the same framework so findings could be compared.
