Using Focus Groups to Identify Lifestyle and Health Issues in the Elderly

Abstract

This article describes the use of focus groups with elders at an inner city senior citizens center. The findings were used to gain lifestyle information to guide fbture activities of a grant project and to form the basis for a health education needs assessment and programming for the seniors. Several predominant lifestyle themes were identified and fifteen health education needs were established. Focus groups were found to be an effective tool for collecting information from older adults and served to sensitize health

Focus groups as a research method: a critique of some aspects of their use in nursing research

“…Sometimes the analysis process is referred to as`content analysis (McDaniel 1996, McFarland et al 1998, Sim 1998, but this term is more usually reserved for techniques used to quantify qualitative data by counting frequencies of occurrences of words, phrases or themes as discussed by Krippendorff (1980) and Stewart and Shamdasani (1990). Latent' as well as`manifest' content may be identi®ed using this method, but this may also rely on quanti®cation of data.…”