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 Whatcom
County
A Classic Community Nutrition
Assessment Experience
Planning and Conducting Focus
Groups
| Data to be Gathered | Target
Groups |
Data to Be Gathered
The questions that were used in the focus groups were:
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What do you perceive to be the key nutrition issues in Whatcom County?
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What nutrition issues affect you personally?
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How have you dealt with these issues?
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Where did you find information in the community to help you address this
issue?
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Where did you find assistance in the community to help you address this
issue?
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What do you think that you as an individual might do to help remedy the
key nutrition issues in the community?
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What would you like to see community organizations do to address these
issues?
Nutrition was defined for focus group participants as,
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"Food and drink that provide the body with nutrients for optimal
growth and development."
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Target Groups
The target demographic profile for the focus groups was healthy, employed,
young adults. Participants were recruited at their worksites. Separate
groups were held for men and women. There were a total of five groups at
four different work sites, two groups of men and three groups of women.
Organizing and Conducting the Groups
The following is a step by step description of the process of convening
community based focus groups.
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The WCHD Nutritionist established a contract with focus group facilitators
who conducted the group and analyzed the results. The facilitators had
experience in conducting qualitative research and were well recommended
by others who had used them.
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The Nutritionist contacted local employers to establish sites for the groups
and sources of participants. She found that personal contacts helped with
this step, as it was often a challenge to find the right person to contact
at each organization.
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The Nutritionist recruited focus group members through employee newsletters,
postings at job sites, and personal recruiting through contacts at each
employer.
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The Nutritionist scheduled members and arranged rooms for times that the
facilitators were available.
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The Nutritionist provided lunch or dinner as well as a $10.00 gift certificate
to a grocery store to each participant. The meal was a sub sandwich, cookies
and fruit, and was felt to be an important component of the focus group
by both organizers and attendees. (The process of recruiting and scheduling
sites and subjects was very time consuming and might be contracted out
if this is a possibility.)
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A Pilot test focus group of WCHD employees was held to refine questions
and format.
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The five focus groups were held. They each met for 75-90 minutes. At the
beginning of each session, participants were asked to complete consent
forms. Focus groups were recorded on audio tape and one of the facilitators
typed the discussion into a lap top computer during each session. Recordings
were used to complete any missing sections.
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The two facilitators each read each transcript several times and wrote
down themes and categories. The facilitators discussed the conceptual categories
to be used for the coding system. Finally they reread each transcript marking
each statement using the coding system.
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Results of the final analysis were presented in a document prepared by
the facilitators and are summarized below.
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Demographic
Information