| Eligibility and recruitment |
| Challenges to recruitment | (Interviewer): ‘Have you ever taken part in any research before?’ (Participant): ‘No. I have not been asked really’. (Female, moderately frail) ‘If anything happens I am in trouble, I would rather avoid it (research)’. (Male, severely frail) ‘I don’t think I had been dialysing all that long and I didn’t know how (the trial) would affect me’. (Male, mildly frail) ‘I do enough, I am always out, up-down, do this, do that, I have just put clothes in the machine you know for a wash, I go for a shower you know’. (Female, mildly frail) ‘You have got to take age into consideration. Now I am getting old and there is a limit to what I can do. And it doesn't get any easier it gets worse’. (Female, moderately frail)
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| Motivators to participation | ‘If it helps someone else who has the same problem as me, they might be able to do something for him that they couldn’t do for me’. (Male, moderately frail) ‘I found the (outcome measures) very beneficial actually…it kind of educated me at the time…educationally it was informative’. (Male, vulnerable) ‘What I like about research is that you are better looked after. I think if patients were a bit more aware that you are going to get preferential treatment, I think it would make it more attractive’. (Female, vulnerable)
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| Suggested methods of enhancing recruitment | ‘The research team should be there and explain that they don’t want much, explain the benefits. Explain it’s not for us (the research team) it’s for the patients benefit, let them try and if then it doesn’t go well (the participant) can stop it… it’s not the information you give but talking as a person that’s more important’. (Male, vulnerable) ‘If I have got confidence in (the researcher) and that (they) know what they are doing and why, then it's fine’. (Male, mildly frail) ‘I don’t like it (the text) is too tiny, I can’t even read (the information sheet) with reading glasses on…a picture or two might also help’. (Female, mildly frail) ‘There’s a lot of sheets in (the information sheet), I think people will get fed up reading all that’. (Female, mildly frail)
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| Trial retention |
‘I have thought of dropping out because I am unable to do much. I am not interested because…I am not well. I have got a lot of things (wrong) with my body’. (Female, mildly frail) ‘Somebody recently asked me about research and I tried it for about three weeks and I said no, not for me…I thought no, this is not what I want, it’s not particularly helpful’. (Female, moderately frail)
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