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Recruiting participants to trials is challenging. To date, research has focussed on improving recruitment once the trial is underway, rather than planning strategies to support it, e.g. developing trial information leaflets together with people like those to be recruited. We explored whether people involved with participant recruitment have explicit planning strategies; if so, how these are developed, and if not, what prevents effective planning.

Design: Individual qualitative semi-structured interviews. Data were analysed using a Framework approach, and themes linked through comparison of data within and across stakeholder groups.

Participants: 23 international trialists (UK, Canada, South Africa, Italy, the Netherlands); 11 self-identifying as ‘Designers’; those who design recruitment methods, and 12 self-identifying as ‘Recruiters’; those who recruit participants. Interviewees’ had recruitment experience spanning diverse interventions and clinical areas.

Setting: Primary, secondary and tertiary-care sites involved in trials, academic institutions, and contract research organisations supporting pharmaceutical companies.

To varying degrees, respondents had prospective strategies for recruitment. These were seldom based on rigorous evidence.

When describing their recruitment planning experiences, interviewees identified a range of influences that they believe impacted success: