Table 2.

Semistructured interviews with members of CRNs and CCG

Question	Response
What are the facilitators to practice recruitment?	“Communicating with the practices. I think in an academic centre, if you’re writing to practices, they don’t really know you, do they? Whereas actually, if we put it in our local bulletins and keep encouraging practices to think about it, then it’s probably a better way of increasing uptake.”(P4 CCG)
	“There’s been a nice friendship [with study team] and trying to create the right words to share with practices.” [P1 CCG)
	“Just keep on plugging. I think quite often they’re either going through a really busy time, I’ve contacted the wrong person or there’s not enough information there for them to make a snap decision. The more information I’ve got and the simpler I make it, then the more likely they are to say yes or no.” [P3 CRN)
What are the barriers to practice recruitment?	“To be honest it was a little bit more difficult to get the paperwork signed by the CCG as well within the practices, ‘cause a lot of the practices we generally have a named contact, someone who already knows us and we’ve got relationships with…so it was a lot easier to get engagement than it was from CCGs.” [P2 CRN)
	“I try to avoid the practice managers making the decisions if I can because they are good gatekeepers. Well our practice is very busy, that GP won’t be interested when actually sometimes they quite often are.” [P3 CRN)
Tell us about Research active and non-active (naïve) practices?	“It’s usually the research active sites that get back to us but sometimes others do respond and want to take part in studies and we’ve got this ongoing engagement programme with all the practices in ((city)) to try and get more of them on board with research even if it’s just doing simple stuff.” [P5 CRN)
	“I would say that about a third of the practices were what I would call research naïve or inexperienced, green as in they hadn’t really had a sort of established relationship with us in the past.” [P2 CRN)
Tell us about the role of CCGs in Research?	“I mean in reality they [CCG] don’t play a major part in—and never actually have a major role in research. It’s not a core business of a CCG like it would be in a provider. So we don’t have a research department, which is probably why the CHICO trial ended up at my door because it was about prescribing.” [P4 CCG)
Tell us about efficient design trials?	“Yeah, go for it because once you’ve got the practice on board, it’s almost like they don’t have to do as much either, I would definitely encourage practices to take on this type of research, definitely, as long as you’ve got everybody on board and it all works through then yeah, there’s no reason why not.” [P3 CRN)
	“It seems quite suited to primary care because I think primary care’s biggest issue is time. So, if they’ve got a patient in front of them, the chance of them actually getting that patient to consent is probably quite low because it’s just they—that’s an extra minute on a ten-minute appointment isn’t it really?”(P4 CCG)

CCG, Clinical Commission Group; CRNs, Clinical Research Networks.