Are older adult research participants representative of the general population? Results from 19 clinical studies at one academic research center
Rebecca H. Neiberg, Xiaoyan Leng, Denise K. Houston, Kristen M. Beavers, Michael E. Miller, Kimberly Kennedy, Jason Fanning, Megan B. Irby, Dalane W. Kitzman, Stephen B. Kritchevsky, Barbara J. Nicklas · 2026
Read Are older adult research participants representative of the general population? Results from 19 clinical studies at one academic research center by Rebecca H. Neiberg, Xiaoyan Leng, Denise K. Houston, Kristen M. Beavers, Michael E. Miller, Kimberly Kennedy, Jason Fanning, Megan B. Irby, Dalane W. Kitzman, Stephen B. Kritchevsky, Barbara J. Nicklas (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13563415.txt.
Description
Rebecca H. Neiberg and ten colleagues ask whether older people who join research studies actually look like the older public. If they do not, findings may mislead the very patients medicine serves. The 2026 analysis pooled 3,671 participants, average age 69, from 19 studies run at Wake Forest University School of Medicine between 2002 and 2023. The team compared enrollees with people who were phone-screened but never joined, and with census figures for the local catchment area.
Only about one screened person in nine enrolled. The clearest skews were age and schooling: adults over 75 made up 18 percent of enrollees against 29 percent locally, while anyone with some college reached 80 percent against 24 percent locally. Black participants were slightly overrepresented, at 19 against 14 percent. Sex and white ethnicity matched well. The authors urge recruiters to chase the oldest old and the less schooled, whose absence bends results.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Rebecca H. Neiberg, Xiaoyan Leng, Denise K. Houston, Kristen M. Beavers, Michael E. Miller, Kimberly Kennedy, Jason Fanning, Megan B. Irby, Dalane W. Kitzman, Stephen B. Kritchevsky, Barbara J. Nicklas |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 30833 |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |