1. Introduction
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RECRUITMENT
The author (Barbara D’Amen) carried out the project activities and contributed to the writing of the article as a researcher at the Centre for Socio-Economic Research on Ageing, National Institute of Health and Science on Ageing (IRCCS INRCA). Since 15 January 2023, she has been a researcher at the Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT), Via Cesare Balbo 39, 00184 Rome, Italy.Young carers provide a substantial amount of care to family members and support to friends, yet their situation has not been actively addressed in research and policy in many European countries or indeed globally. Awareness of their situation by professionals and among children and young carers themselves remains low overall. Thus, young carers remain a largely hidden group within society. This study reports and analyses the recruitment process in a multi-centre intervention study offering psychosocial support to adolescent young carers (AYCs) aged 15–17 years. A cluster-randomised controlled trial was designed, with recruitment taking place in Italy, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom exploiting various channels, including partnerships with schools, health and social services and carers organisations. In total, 478 AYCs were recruited and, after screening failures, withdrawals and initial dropouts, 217 were enrolled and started the intervention. Challenges encountered in reaching, recruiting and retaining AYCs included low levels of awareness among AYCs, a low willingness to participate in study activities, uncertainty about the prevalence of AYCs, a limited school capacity to support the recruitment; COVID-19 spreading in 2020–2021 and related restrictions. Based on this experience, recommendations are put forward for how to better engage AYCs in research.Young carers are children and young people (<18 years old) who provide regular and substantial care to ill or disabled family members [Previous research has brought attention to the difficulty of unequivocally stating whether a young person is providing regular and/or substantial care (thus to be considered as a young carer) or not. In this respect, it is more appropriate to consider care activities provided by young individuals in the light of a continuum of care ranging from caring about the person to caring for the person, as opposed to a binary condition (i.e., being a young carer or not) [Low awareness and preparedness by formal and educational services, as well as the challenges related to defining young carers, lead to a range of problems when researchers and practitioners aim to identify young carers for research or providing support [In general terms, reaching young carers and involving them in research is complex [Furthermore, selective participation mechanisms exist for recruitment, due to the following: structural factors, e.g., a lower likelihood that a sub-group of the target population with certain demographic or socio-economic characteristics are considered, found or concretely involved by researchers in a study, and agency-related factors, e.g., a lower likelihood of a certain sub-group to be interested and willing to participate in a research study. These mechanisms usually produce biases based on the fact that people from lower socio-economic status, minority groups, rural areas or with poorer health are less likely to be invited and ultimately be involved in research [Phelps [Among young carers, a specific sub-group of adolescent young carers (AYCs) aged 15–17 years are an under-investigated target group. This age group of adolescents deserves more attention in research, since they find themselves in a delicate, transitionary phase between childhood and adulthood [The aim of this article is to report and analyse the recruitment process in an intervention study designed to provide psychosocial support to adolescent young carers (AYCs) aged 15–17 years in six European countries. The intervention study was conducted within the broader “Psychosocial support for promoting the mental health and well-being among adolescent young carers (AYCs) in Europe” project (ME-WE), funded by the European Union under the Horizon 2020 programme (grant agreement no. 754702) [