The role of focus group interviews in assessing the primary health care and family planning programme in India
Shariff, A.; Visaria, P.
RRA Notes International Institute for Environment and Development 17: 34-39
1993
Document Number: 625012
Focus group interviews (FGIs) are ipso facto group discussions. During the exploratory stage, discussions may be unguided or non-directed and unstructured. Once some rapport is established, it is possible to guide the discussion to focus on important issues and yet allow other related discussions to occur freely enough to permit new points to emerge. The FGIs used in this study were focused on various qualitative issues relating to primary health care, family planning services (FPP) and factors influencing child survival. The paper describes certain key features of FGIs based on experiences during research on the qualitative assessment of the primary health and FPP inputs and performance in Gujarat. Certain procedures can make a FGI easier, more reliable and overall more successful, such as selection of areas, selection of participants, role of the moderator, documentation and analysis. The paper concludes that the fact that primary health care and family planning programme is a massive social welfare programme poses many difficulties in assessing its functioning; however, the FGIs help in devising measures for assessment. The study demonstrates the possibility of gathering rich information which reflects the quality of the programme.