Recruitment and retention of child welfare workers in longitudinal research: Successful strategies from the Florida Study of Professionals for Safe Families

Longitudinal panel studies are effective strategies to assess the personal impact of child welfare work, as well as employment outcomes of workers over time. However, longitudinal studies encounter obstacles such as disproportionate attrition that threaten the validity of findings. This paper provides an overview of the Florida Study of Professionals for Safe Families (FSPSF), a 5-year longitudinal panel study of newly hired workers into the child welfare workforce. The purpose of this paper is three-fold: 1) describe the study methodology and recruitment and retention techniques for the FSPSF; 2) illustrate Estrada and colleagues' Tailored Panel Management framework (2014) through FSPSF methodological decisions; and 3) provide guidance and time estimates of key tasks for those interested in undertaking similar projects, with a particular focus on electronic data collection and communication strategies. Initial results are excellent - 84% of all eligible workers completed baseline surveys (n = 1,451). At Wave 2 (6 months), 81% of those workers were retained, with preliminary findings of 84% retention of the original baseline respondents at Wave 3 (12 months).