Kagawa-Singer Marjorie, Adler Shelley R, Mouton Charles E, Ory Marcia, Underwood Lynne G
UCLA Department of Community Health Sciences and Department of Asian American Studies, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA.
Ethn Dis. 2009 Summer;19(3):352-8.
To outline the lessons learned about the use of focus groups for the multisite, multi-ethnic longitudinal Study of Women Across the Nation (SWAN). Focus groups were designed to identify potential cultural differences in the incidence of symptoms and the meaning of transmenopause among women of diverse cultures, and to identify effective recruitment and retention strategies.
Inductive and deductive focus groups for a multi-ethnic study.
Seven community research sites across the United States conducted focus groups with six ethnic populations: African American, Chinese American, Japanese American, Mexican American, non-Hispanic white, and Puerto Rican.
Community women from each ethnic group of color.
A set of four/five focus groups in each ethnic group as the formative stage of the deductive, quantitative SWAN survey.
Identification of methodological advantages and challenges to the successful implementation of formative focus groups in a multi-ethnic, multi-site population-based epidemiologic study.
We provide recommendations from our lessons learned to improve the use of focus groups in future studies with multi-ethnic populations.
Mixed methods using inductive and deductive approaches require the scientific integrity of both research paradigms. Adequate resources and time must be budgeted as essential parts of the overall strategy from the outset of study. Inductive cross-cultural researchers should be key team members, beginning with inception through each subsequent design phase to increase the scientific validity, generalizability, and comparability of the results across diverse ethnic groups, to assure the relevance, validity and applicability of the findings to the multicultural population of focus.
概述在全国多地点、多民族女性纵向研究（SWAN）中使用焦点小组所获得的经验教训。焦点小组旨在识别不同文化背景女性在症状发生率和围绝经期意义方面潜在的文化差异，并确定有效的招募和保留策略。
针对多民族研究的归纳性和演绎性焦点小组。
美国七个社区研究地点针对六个种族群体开展了焦点小组：非裔美国人、华裔美国人、日裔美国人、墨西哥裔美国人、非西班牙裔白人以及波多黎各裔。
每个有色人种群体的社区女性。
在每个种族群体中设置四/五个焦点小组，作为演绎性定量SWAN调查的形成阶段。
确定在多民族、多地点基于人群的流行病学研究中成功实施形成性焦点小组的方法学优势和挑战。
我们从经验教训中提供建议，以改进焦点小组在未来多民族人群研究中的应用。
采用归纳和演绎方法的混合方法要求两种研究范式都具备科学完整性。从研究一开始，就必须将充足的资源和时间作为总体策略的重要组成部分进行预算。归纳性跨文化研究人员应成为关键团队成员，从研究启动到随后的每个设计阶段都要参与，以提高结果在不同种族群体间的科学有效性、普遍性和可比性，确保研究结果与目标多元文化人群的相关性、有效性和适用性。
