Department of Public Health and Community Medicine, University of Verona, Italy.
Patient Educ Couns. 2011 Mar;82(3):420-8. doi: 10.1016/j.pec.2011.01.005. Epub 2011 Feb 3.
To describe the methodological procedures of a multi-centre focus group research for obtaining content categories also suitable for categorical statistical analyses.
Inductive content analyses were performed on a subsample of 27 focus groups conducted in three different countries, the Netherlands (Utrecht), the UK (Liverpool) and Italy (Verona). The analyses of the subsample of focus group discussions were performed in five steps: (1) independent development of content categories in each of the participating centres, (2) obtaining consensus categories, (3) creation of a manual with coding rules and defining criteria for categories and subcategories, (4) assessment of inter-rater reliability to identify unreliable categories to be revised, and (5) repetition of inter-rater reliability assessment.
The resulting coding system considers five areas: non verbal communication, process oriented expression, task oriented or problem focused expressions, affective or emotional expressions, and physician's personal characteristics. It contains 12 categories of acceptable inter-rater reliability and 41 subcategories.
The coding procedures show how focus group data, obtained in an international multi-centre study can be analysed in a systematic way combining scientific rigour with the richness of data obtainable from qualitative methodologies.
The applied procedures may be helpful for multi-centre focus group research on other topics.
描述一种多中心焦点小组研究的方法学程序，以获得也适用于分类统计分析的内容类别。
在三个不同国家（荷兰乌得勒支、英国利物浦和意大利维罗纳）进行的 27 个焦点小组的子样本中进行了归纳内容分析。对焦点小组讨论子样本的分析分五步进行：（1）在每个参与中心独立开发内容类别，（2）获得共识类别，（3）创建一个带有编码规则和定义类别和子类别的标准的手册，（4）评估评分者间可靠性，以确定需要修订的不可靠类别，（5）重复评分者间可靠性评估。
由此产生的编码系统考虑了五个方面：非言语交流、面向过程的表达、面向任务或问题的表达、情感或情绪表达以及医生的个人特征。它包含 12 个可接受的评分者间可靠性类别和 41 个子类别。
编码程序展示了如何以系统的方式分析国际多中心研究中获得的焦点小组数据，将科学严谨性与从定性方法获得的丰富数据相结合。
所应用的程序可能有助于其他主题的多中心焦点小组研究。
