Practical Guidelines for African Americans : 4.0 Methodology for Finding Out About Your Audience

Effective communication with the audience depends on your familiarity with the audience. This communication process should be continuous throughout the planning, implementation, and evaluation phases of the printed cancer education material development process. Four basic methods can be used to find out about the audience: literature reviews, direct observation, key informant interviews, and focus groups. These methods can provide you with information about the audience that will help you design printed cancer education materials.

Conduct a Literature Review

A literature review provides basic information about the health practices of an audience and the factors that influence those practices. University, public, and computer libraries and various agencies at the community, local, state, and national level provide information that others have collected about your audience. When conducting your search for literature, look beyond your own field and explore what others have found and how others address culture in research. Anthropology, psychology, sociology, intercultural communications, and many other fields will yield valuable secondary quantitative and qualitative data on culture and on how to explore and collect information on an audience's health practices. Information about African Americans that is obtained through a literature review provides a basis for further investigation into the dynamics of African-American culture.

Perform Direct Observations

Directly observing audience members provides you with valuable information about their health practices. Directly observing audience members also provides you with insight to their knowledge and attitudes on cancer. The best way to familiarize yourself with the community is to develop one-on-one relationships with members of the community. A good place to start in an African-American community is the local church. Interacting with community members on a personal level will allow you to establish credibility and trust among its members. Community members are more likely to provide subjective, personal information if they recognize that you are genuinely interested in helping them.

Three things to remember are:

Go to places in the community where your audience frequently gathers such as places of worship, work sites, clinics, businesses, and restaurants;
Familiarize yourself with the daily habits of members of the community; and
Record your observations.

Conduct Key Informant Interviews

Identify community representatives who have social ties with the audience. Community leaders, such as religious leaders, political leaders, health care professionals, educators, organization leaders, and numerous others, can assist you in communicating with the audience. Community leaders who have already been accepted by an audience can help you easily locate community members who can give you detailed information about the health knowledge, attitudes, and practice of members of the African-American community. Community leaders provide a direct avenue to your audience.

Conduct Focus Group Meetings

Focus group meetings are informal meetings between you and members of the audience to discuss their knowledge, attitudes, and practices. Focus group meetings provide first-hand, detailed information about the audience. More diverse focus groups provide a broader range of information about the audience. Typically, focus groups consist of eight to ten members of the audience. It is difficult to handle larger groups, and more importantly, larger groups provide very little detailed information.

When you moderate a focus group, record questions. These questions may offer valuable insight into the health attitudes and practices of the audience. Encourage focus group members to talk freely about their health concerns. You should hold focus group meetings in settings that are easily accessible and comfortable for audience members, so that the group discussion is facilitated easily and conveniently.

Keep in mind that some research methods may not be appropriate for a particular audience. It is up to you to find out (through trial and error) the best method for getting information from your audience. When collecting information on a culture, be sure that your information is free of biases and stereotypes. African Americans are more receptive to conversation about their culture in focus groups if the moderator and recorder are African American.