Perceptions and beliefs about nine diseases

Focus groups in health research: exploring the meanings of health and illness

Focus group method is becoming increasingly popular among qualitative researchers. After introducing focus group method and briefly overviewing its use in health research, this article shows that the distinctive (and under-used) feature of focus group method is its generation of interactive data. Illustrating my argument with examples from health- related focus group research (including my own data on breast cancer), I argue that this feature makes focus groups an ideal method for gaining access to research participants' own meanings. Interactive data result in enhanced disclosure, improved access to participants' own language and concepts, better understanding of participants' own agendas, the production of more elaborated accounts, and the opportunity to observe the co-construction of meaning in action. Focus groups are, then, an ideal method for exploring people's own meanings and understandings of health and illness.

Why immunise. Care giver understanding of childhood immunisation

Currently in Australia, both the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) and the Public Health Association have stated that our immunisation uptake levels are not of a high enough percentage within the population to prevent outbreaks of childhood vaccine preventable diseases (1996). While the literature discusses factors that are believed to influence care givers' decisions to vaccinate their children, few Australian studies focus on care giver understanding of childhood diseases and vaccination. The purpose of this descriptive study was to profile care givers who presented their children for vaccination at public health clinics regarding their level of understanding of childhood vaccine preventable diseases. Two hundred and forty eight care givers attending one of six public clinics were asked to respond verbally to a researcher administered questionnaire. Demographic information as well as information related specifically to immunisation was collected from each participant. The major findings of this preliminary study indicate a very low level of knowledge among careers presenting their child for vaccination at the public health clinic. Twenty-three percent of carers had no knowledge regarding the vaccinations that their child was receiving and the disease for which the vaccination was administered. In fact, 18 percent of care givers were unsure of the relationship between vaccination and the likelihood of their child contracting an infectious disease. The personal health record was not found to be useful as an educational resource. Although 99 percent of care givers had the booklet in their possession only 8 percent had referred to it as a source of information. The major sources of information were identified as child health nurses (44%) and hospital midwives (34%). The results of this study highlight the disparity in knowledge levels among care givers with regards to vaccination and the diseases they prevent and the important role of the midwife and child health nurse in disseminating information relating to immunisation.

Immunisation: causes of failure and strategies and tactics for success

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[Analysis of the health and living conditions of the urban population of Botucatu, SP (Brazil). II. Knowledge and opinion of the population on symptoms of diseases]

It was verified the extent of the information of the urban population of Botucatu, SP (Brazil) on health questions. Knowledge and opinions about frequency and severity of thirteen symptoms and signs of disease were researched in 1005 families sampled. The answers were analyzed according to age, sex, level of education and socio-economic level. They showed a tendency compatible with scientific medical knowledge. In the comparison of the sexes, by age, (young adult) women gave more value to the frequency and severity of most of the symptoms than men. The high scores observed for severity showed a tendency to decrease with the increasing level of education for all the symptoms. There were variations among the symptoms in the appreciation of frequency according to the socio-economic level, with a tendency to a decrease in the high scores related to severity, according to the increase in socio-economic level. The degree of information observed in the population contradicts the prejudice, still existing in the medical area, about laymen's lack of knowledge. The hypothesis that the sample studied had access to several sources of information, among them the extensive local network of medical services, is put forward.

Causal reasoning and the treatment of diarrhoeal disease by mothers in Kenya

A study of reasoning about the cause and treatment of childhood diarrhoea by Maasai schooled and unschooled mothers was carried out in Kenya, using a method of analysis developed within cognitive psychology. A dramatic difference in the conceptual structures of mothers' reasoning about both the cause and treatment of diarrhoea was found between the unschooled and schooled group. The unschooled mothers' explanation of diarrhoea was in terms of illness, resulting from social and moral factors. The knowledge structures generated showed global coherence. The schooled mothers explained diarrhoea with a series of quasi-biomedical facts about the disease with little or no connections between facts. The role of understanding the underlying disease processes for learning in health education is discussed in the context of Kenyan culture.

Common-sense beliefs about illness: a mediating role for the doctor

A great deal is said these days about how important it is for doctors to pay attention to the patient's beliefs about his or her disease. Better knowledge of such beliefs, it is argued, will enable the doctor to counter ignorance, enhance communication, and reduce non-compliance. The view advanced here is that the significance of patients' beliefs and their frequent resistance to rational correction will emerge only if they are seen as components in a process of "narrative reconstruction". It is suggested that the main difficulty is not ignorance but rather the fact that doctor and patient have different purposes: whereas the doctor's objective is to explain the aetiology of the disease, the patient may be more concerned to make sense of the disruption caused by the disease.