Clinical Trial Participants survey about barriers to participation

If you want to generate an AI-powered survey for clinical trial participants—specifically to investigate barriers to participation—you can do it in seconds, right here, with a click. Specific gives you the tools and the expertise to dive deep, without the headache. Try it: you’ll get high-quality questions, instantly.

Why understanding barriers to clinical trial participation matters

Gathering feedback from clinical trial participants is essential if we want to improve recruitment, retention, and overall trial success. If you’re not running these surveys, you’re missing out on crucial insights that could save your research months—or even years—of wasted effort.

Here’s why this matters:

• Recruitment is a giant challenge: Almost 80% of clinical trials face delays because of patient recruitment issues. That means delayed treatments, blown budgets, and lost opportunities to advance science. [1]

• Missed enrollment goals are the norm: 70% of clinical trials don’t enroll enough participants. [1] When we don’t understand why people hesitate, our trials stall out or fail altogether.

• Participants want to share: Direct feedback shines a light on real pain points—like lack of awareness, confusing consent forms, fears about side effects (the top reason for refusal at 35% [2]), and logistical hurdles.

• Skipping participant surveys leads to avoidable failure: Over 70% of unsuccessful trials cite recruitment problems as a primary cause. [1]

It's not just about numbers. Surveys let us listen, adapt, and prove to future participants that their voices can actually change the experience. We see better retention, faster enrollment, and fewer costly mistakes. For more, check out these breakdowns of the best questions for clinical trial participant surveys on our blog.

The advantage of using an AI survey generator

Survey creation is no longer a long, manual process. With an AI survey generator like Specific's, you get speed and quality—no more wrestling with clunky forms, guessing wording, or iterative drafts bouncing around your inbox. Here’s how it stacks up:

Why use AI for clinical trial participant surveys?

• It’s fast, accurate, and never fatigued.

• You get better data—because questions are clear, logical, and relevant to both patient and study staff.

• Specific’s conversational user experience drives high engagement; surveys unfold like a real interview, making it inviting for people hesitant to fill traditional forms.

If you’re ready, just type your prompt into the survey generator on this page and watch the quality unfold. Want to know more about how AI survey creation works? Check our in-depth guide to creating clinical trial participant surveys for this exact use case.

Designing questions that drive real insight

We’ve all seen vague questions that don’t tell you much. For example:

• Bad: “Was the trial easy?”

• Good: “What specific factors made participation in the trial easy or difficult? Can you describe any barriers you faced?”

Specific’s AI survey builder is trained to avoid the traps: it generates open, clear, and unbiased questions that surface real barriers to clinical trial participation—like awareness, logistics, trust, health literacy, and financial limitations.

How do we help you avoid bad questions? Our AI leaves out leading phrases and clarifies ambiguity by nature. For example, instead of asking, "Did you encounter problems?" (which might nudge someone toward a negative answer), a well-designed prompt asks, "Were there any aspects of participating that were challenging or surprising to you? Please explain."

If you want to try writing better questions on your own, here’s an actionable tip: always ask for specifics (“Can you share an example?”) and avoid yes/no phrasing unless you absolutely must quantify. For more depth, read our article on what makes for great survey questions in this area.

Automatic follow-up questions based on previous reply

One game-changer: Specific’s AI interviewer generates smart, conversational follow-ups in real time, tailored to each reply. Why does that matter? Because half-baked answers don’t cut it. If you’re just collecting a single round of responses, you risk missing the “why” and “how” that unlock actionable insights—and often, that means you’ll have to chase people later for clarification.

Here’s how things can go wrong without follow-ups, and how automatic probing fixes it:

• Clinical trial participant: “I just didn’t feel comfortable.”

• AI follow-up: “Can you tell me more about what made you feel uncomfortable? Was it something about the information provided, the location, or something else?”

• Clinical trial participant: "Getting to the site was difficult."

• AI follow-up: "Was the difficulty getting to the site due to distance, transportation options, or your schedule? Your experience would really help us understand this better."

You instantly get richer, more useful stories—without extra effort or awkward email chains. Want to see how follow-ups work in action? Try generating a survey and see the experience for yourself.

These follow-ups turn your survey into a real conversation—a conversational survey that feels natural, not robotic. There’s more info at our page on AI follow-up questions.

Survey delivery: landing page or in-product

Think about what fits best for your audience and topic:

• Sharable landing page surveys: Perfect for sending links to participants by email, recruiting new respondents via patient advocacy groups, or posting to social forums. If you want to capture the widest group of clinical trial participants—especially those not already on your platform—landing pages work incredibly well for Barriers To Participation research.

• In-product surveys: Ideal if you’re running a digital trial platform and want to trigger surveys at precise moments, like after onboarding or consent. For example, ask about barriers immediately after someone reviews eligibility criteria.

We recommend starting with landing pages for early-stage barriers research, then layering in in-product targeting as your digital trial experience grows more sophisticated.

Analyze survey responses with AI

Say goodbye to exporting text and staring at sheets. AI survey analysis in Specific instantly summarizes each response, finds common themes (like “fear of side effects” or “location barriers”), and organizes insights for you—no manual work required. Features like topic detection and direct chat with AI let you dig deeper (check out how to analyze Clinical Trial Participants Barriers To Participation survey responses with AI for a detailed guide). Unlock automated survey insights and make analyzing survey responses with AI your new standard.

Create your Barriers To Participation survey now

Ready to understand what really stops people from joining clinical trials? Create your AI-powered, actionable survey with Specific in seconds—for free.