Method: Households were selected at random from the New South Wales Electronic White Pages. Each household was contacted by telephone to establish if there was an adult daily smoker resident. If more than one daily smoker lived in the household one was randomly selected. Consenting smokers were randomly allocated to receive either proactive telephone counselling calls or a one-off mail-out of self-help materials. Participants complete telephone interviews at 4, 7 and 13 months post-recruitment.

Results: Approximately 45,000 households have been contacted to recruit the trial target of 1,460 smokers. About half (52%) of daily smokers have agreed to participate in the study. Data will be presented on the demographic characteristics, quitting intentions and cigarette consumption of the recruited sample and of non-participants who complete a baseline interview. These data will be compared with daily smokers in the NSW community to examine whether a representative group of smokers is participating in the trial.

Conclusions: These data illustrate the potential of proactive recruitment approaches in increasing smokers' use of cessation strategies and broadening the types of smokers who access telephone support.

Implications: Proactive recruitment strategies have the potential to increase smokers' use of effective cessation support. Such recruitment methods could be implemented to refer smokers to existing services such as Quitlines.