CCFHH Program Awardees: Evaluation By Focus Groups
From WikiAdvocacy
Some of the program awardees formed focus groups to examine the impact and importance of the tool. The findings of these focus groups are below along with links to the full reports.
[edit] Duke University Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy
Duke University held focus groups with employees for evaluation purposes.
- Focus groups held with 58 Duke employees, including 9 LFL Health Risk Duke-CCFHH Project Final Report Assessment nurses, revealed that family health history was overwhelmingly considered important to health and was an appropriate addition to the LFL Health Risk Assessment program.
- Click to see Duke University Institute: Final Report.
[edit] The Genomedical Connection
The Genomedical Connection conducted three focus groups with the purpose of evaluating the booklets.
- While evaluating the CCFHH booklets was not part of the condition of the award, the booklets were incorporated into The Genomedical Connection’s education material evaluation strategy. Education materials created by The Genomedical Connection were evaluated through a series of focus groups on their effectiveness to meet the following goals: 1) Education materials will be comprehensive, useful, persuasive, and attractive to the target audience; 2) Education materials will motivate people to collect family history, facilitate discussions between family members, and facilitate a discussion with their physicians; and 3) Education materials will include health messages which are consistent with those provided by health care providers in Guilford County.
- The CCFHH booklets were reviewed by three focus groups. A semi-structured focus group guide and Demographic form was used for each focus groups conducted. Two groups were conducted with members of a Presbyterian church and the other was conducted with low level readers attending a community college reading course. Demographics of each group can be found in Table 3. Overall, participants liked the colors and pictures, felt that the booklets were easy to read, and felt that the information inside was important. Participants suggested 1) making The Guide to Understanding Genetics and Health as book 1 rather than book 2, 2) labeling the books as Book 1 of 2 and Book 2 of 2 so that they knew to look for both booklets, 3) restructuring the table of contents in The Guide to Understanding Genetics and Health so that it is similar to, as well as mentions, The Guide to Family Health History, 4) make the colors of The Guide to Understanding Genetics and Health more contrasting as sometimes the printing was hard to see or did not contrast enough so people missed it, and 5) changing the picture on the front of The Guide to Understanding Genetics and Health because they felt that it looked like the people were smoking. One participant commented “the parents are smoking and the children are learning that behavior and are smoking too.” One misunderstanding occurred from a lower level reader with the word “affect”. In several places within The Guide to Family Health History the word “affect” is used, as in “how does family health history affect your health?” This reader misunderstood the meaning of the word affect to mean affection. At this time TGC does not have a suggestion on how to remedy word misunderstandings from lower level readers. However, TGC does suggest that Genetic Alliance determine the level of reader that they want to target, with the understanding that some people will be missed. Trends and Themes from the three focus groups can be found in Appendix D.
- Click to see The Genomedical Connection: Final Report.
Click here to return to Family Health History.
