Background Clinical trial cohorts do not often reflect target patient populations because minority ethnic groups are underrepresented in clinical trials.

Aim To increase minority ethnic groups’ opportunities to participate in clinical trials, by evaluating ethnically diverse patients’ perspectives of considering participation in renal clinical research.

Discussion The authors gave patients participating in at least one research study the opportunity to take part in a structured survey. The survey explored preferences, barriers and opportunities that patients considered when deciding whether to take part in a clinical trial. The authors included participants from multiple ethnic groups so they could compare data for different ethnicities.

Conclusion Participation was a positive experience for most patients, mostly because of the research team’s flexibility and professionalism. Researchers’ gender and ethnicity did not affect the participants’ decision to participate. Cultural preferences were not obvious from the data as 80% of the participants were white.

Implications for practice Patients preferred a face-to-face approach and the expertise of the research team affected participation more than any other characteristics did. However, respondents were already research-engaged and conducting a similar study with those who have declined to participate in research may show different results.