The Use of Focus Groups in Developing Prenatal Health Education Materials

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Abstract
Focus groups were used to develop and pretest mass media prenatal-education materials in the final phase of a study of prenatal health behaviour in Tijuana. The project was designed to develop a mass-media campaign to give women sufficient information to enable them to initiate prenatal self-care and to seek professional care when needed. Following an ethnographic study of 40 pregnant, low-income women in Tijuana, 451 women from the same sampling frame were asked about beliefs, practices, and communication patterns regarding prenatal professional care and self-care. This paper reports on the use of focus groups in the process of testing and refining draft materials created on the basis of information from the ethnographic study and survey. Focus-group discussions enabled the researchers to modify the draft materials for maximum appeal, comprehensibility credibility, and relevance. For example, men were shown in supportive roles because many of the women reported a lack of support from their partners curing pregnancy.

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