Short, C.Rebar, A.Vandelanotte, C.2015-12-032015-12-032015BMC Medical Research Methodology, 2015; 15(1):66-1-66-41471-22881471-2288http://hdl.handle.net/2440/97107Published: 19 August 2015BACKGROUND: Previous research has shown that the personalisation of study invitations improves response rates in survey-based research. To examine if this finding extends to experimental studies, we examined the impact of personalised study invitation e-mails on the response rates of potentially eligible breast cancer survivors for participation in a 6 month randomised controlled trial testing the efficacy of a physical activity intervention. METHODS: Potential participants (n = 344) were sent either a personalised email or a generic email. RESULTS: Those sent the personalised email were 1.5 times (95 % CI = 1.18-1.93) more likely to respond than those sent the generic email. CONCLUSION: These findings suggest that personalisation may be a useful and potentially powerful tool that can be utilised when recruiting participants into experimental studies in order to boost response rates.en© 2015 Short et al. Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.HumansBreast NeoplasmsReproducibility of ResultsInformation DisseminationBehavior TherapyElectronic MailInternetSurvivorsPatient ParticipationFemaleSurveys and QuestionnairesJournal article003003505710.1186/s12874-015-0063-50003596852000012-s2.0-84939240781213602Short, C. [0000-0002-4177-4251]