Physician personal contact and friendship networks are powerful tools for recruitment. Participation rates might improve by including HMO and minority physicians in the recruitment process. Investigators should transfer as much of the study burden from participating physicians to project staff as possible.

Cross-cultural qualitative research is rare and challenging because of difficulties of collecting reliable and valid information when conducting research in a language other than the researcher's primary language. Although standards of rigor exist for the data collection, analysis, interpretation, and reporting of qualitative data, no such standards exist for translation of translinguistic qualitative research. Therefore, a new methodology modeled after Brislin's translation principles was utilized with 60 Latino participants experiencing side effects as a result of prostate cancer treatment. Interviews were conducted in Spanish, transcribed verbatim, and then translated by research staff. By adapting Brislin's process, a new methodology was developed that more accurately conveys the true meaning of the participant's experience, is more appropriate and meaningful, and opens doors to researchers interested in conducting research in a language other than their own, while at the same time ensuring the reliability and validity of study data.

Because little is known about how low-income Latino and African American men attribute meaning and adapt to prostate cancer treatment-related symptoms relative to masculine identity, in this study we sought to develop a descriptive model of this process. Using qualitative methods, 60 Latino and 35 African American/Black men were interviewed by language- and ethnicity-matched male interviewers using a semistructured guide. Interviews were audiotaped and transcribed verbatim. Spanish transcripts were rigorously translated to produce English transcripts. Analysis using grounded theory techniques found that men constructed masculine identities that were influenced by early experience, challenged by several factors including prostate cancer treatment, and underwent a renegotiation process that resulted in the maintenance of their identity as men. Development and testing of interventions that support this process will facilitate the adaptation process for men in a culturally relevant manner.

Despite a growing awareness that prostate cancer is a "couple's disease," the coping strategies, subjective distress, and emotional needs of partners are not adequately addressed. To better understand wives' experiences and processes they enact, we recruited 28 low-income Latinas caring for husbands recovering from prostatectomies to participate in interviews at three time points. Their narratives destabilize a common focus on physical side effects and an implicit bias toward men's reactions. We critically examine an overarching process of normalization, with underlying themes working both toward and against normality. We identified dissonance between detailed accounts of major lifestyle changes and professed normalization. We detail the women's purposeful methods to counteract negative impacts on their lives while seeking support externally. A better understanding of women's strategies and coping is critical to design interventions and education to both capitalize on partners' role in recovery while also addressing hidden causes of increased subjective distress.

The objective was to describe health-related quality-of-life (HRQOL) in low-income men with prostate cancer. Subjects were drawn from a statewide public assistance prostate cancer program. Telephone and mail surveys included the RAND 12-item Health Survey and UCLA Prostate Cancer Index Short Form and were compared with normative age-matched men without cancer from the general population reported on in the literature. Of 286 eligible men, 233 (81%) agreed to participate and completed the necessary items. The sample consisted of 51% Hispanics, 23% non-Hispanic whites, and 17% African Americans. The low-income men had worse scores in every domain of prostate-specific and general HRQOL than had the age-matched general population controls. The degree of disparity indicated substantial clinical differences in almost every domain of physical and emotional functioning between the sample group and the control group. Linear regression modeling determined that among the low-income men, Hispanic race, and income level were predictive of worse physical functioning, whereas only comorbidities predicted mental health. Low-income patients with prostate cancer appear to have quality-of-life profiles that are meaningfully worse than age-matched men from the general population without cancer reported on in the literature.