Back to Annual Meeting

Back to Annual Meeting

APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Recorded presentation

Arnab Mukherjea, MPH, Winston Tseng, PhD, Susan L. Ivey, MD, MHSA, and Carrie L. Graham, PhD, MGS. Health Research for Action, School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, 19 Warren Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720-7360, 510-450-0320, amukherjea@cal.berkeley.edu

Objective: To describe unique considerations in conducting qualitative research in South Asian communities.

Context: Few qualitative studies are conducted in South Asian-American communities which take into account unique socio-cultural nuances of this migrant population. Research examining unique health concerns of South Asian elderly is rare. Qualitative studies involving South Asian participants often depend on prescriptive frameworks that may not fully capture community health concerns. Such “inaccurate” data may not adequately inform culturally-appropriate health surveillance or intervention strategies.

Methods: The study purpose was to examine issues of concern of caregivers for elderly in diverse ethnic communities, including South Asians. Participants were recruited through community partners, which coordinated focus-groups. Trained facilitators, recorders, and translators explored domains of inquiry relevant to caregiving based on a comprehensive literature review. For South Asian focus-groups, recruitment strategies and focus-group facilitation were revised from traditional methodologies and adapted to unique linguistic and cultural nuances, based on community feedback.

Results: Recruitment required extensive amounts of time and effort by researchers to develop trust with community members to secure participation. South Asian caregivers were hesitant to openly discuss experiences without their care recipients present. Culturally-appropriate focus-group facilitation & recording, and data transcription & analysis required presence and participation of culturally-concordant researchers.

Conclusions: Qualitative researchers involving South Asian communities must consider unique circumstances for collection and analysis of meaningful data. These include significant deviations from traditional methodologies to maximize the robustness of community input. High quality information optimizes efficiency of formative data to inform health survey instrumentation and intervention planning.

Learning Objectives: