CBPR > Research Highlights
Study Part 1: January-May, 2006
Ten focus groups consisting of 60 women recruited through the Alachua/Bradford One Stop Career Center (now Florida Works http://www.floridaworks.org) were conducted to gather information to be used in redesigning a health screening questionnaire for use in welfare transition programs. Feedback from the women was used to redesign the health screening questionnaire by determining the wording and order of the questions, content of the narratives used to introduce specific questions, and the acceptability of integrating existing reliable mental health screening measures.
Three rounds of focus groups were conducted in Alachua County. In the first round, participants in three focus groups reviewed and critiqued the current health screening tool, identifying the questions they thought were relevant as well as those they did not. They also discussed other kinds of health information they felt should be included on the questionnaire, the types of chronic conditions that interfered most with their lives and ability to work, and the kinds of information that health providers needed to know about them in order to provide them care. All of the group’s responses were recorded, and participants categorized them.
In the second round, the categorized list of responses developed in the first round was presented for priority ranking to participants in three focus groups. The groups ranked the categorized responses they felt were the most relevant to include on the redesigned questionnaire and decided which ones should be deleted. The resulting ranked list was then presented to the group for additional discussion, and the groups were asked to prioritize the items again. The research team used these final rankings to develop the redesigned pilot health screening questionnaire.
A third round of focus groups was conducted to test the redesigned screening tool. Three focus groups completed the redesigned questionnaire. In addition, they were asked numerous questions about it, including:
- How they felt about completing it
- If there were items they did not understand
- Whether any of the items were offensive
- If the questionnaire included the areas they felt were most important to their health
- Whether there were additional topics that should be covered in the questionnaire and/or omitted.
This completed the screening questionnaire development.
A final focus group was conducted in Bradford County, a rural area, to determine if women in the county’s WTP viewed the completed screening questionnaire as favorably/useful/relevant as did those in the more urban Alachua County.
Study Part 2: August 2006
After the final revision was completed, the redesigned questionnaire was field tested with 111 women at the Alachua/Bradford One Stop career Center (now Florida Works http://www.floridaworks.org) – 100 from the Alachua County center and 11 from Bradford County – who volunteered to rate the tool. These women completed a nine-question survey rating the questionnaire’s personal health relevance, clarity and understanding, sensitivity, respectfulness, and overall acceptability. The five-point rating scale ranged from “not at all” to “extremely so.”
The results of these surveys included the following:
- Two-thirds (66.77%) of participants felt the questions were moderately to extremely related to their personal health issues and/or needs.
- Slightly more than 95% indicated their ability to clearly read and understand the questions as moderately so, quite a bit, or extremely so.
- More than 75% said the questions were moderately to extremely sensitive to their needs.
- 98% said the questions were worded in a way that were moderately to extremely respectful.
- 86% said the questionnaire met their health needs and concerns moderately to extremely well.
