Evidence Library

Abstract:

Aim: To explore the culture of pregnancy and infant health in an African American community via an ethnographic study.

Methods: The researchers set up a community partnership with the help of two community nurses. The core group overseeing the project included nurse researchers, public health nurses from the stakeholder organisations and women who lived in the community.

Findings/recommendations: The involvement of community members helped to improve the design and conduct of the research by:

• shaping the recruitment strategy using local knowledge
• checking the research tools were culturally relevant
• helping the researchers gain entrance to the community
• analysing the data and helping to draw out relevant themes.

The researchers comment on the benefits of the participatory approach and also explain how they had to change the way they worked to ensure genuine collaboration.

This project helped the group to form a strong partnership which has helped them to continue this work, conducting a survey based on the findings of this study and developing a new intervention that was relevant to the community and had complete community support.

External link: The following links will take you to information on this entry on an external website. INVOLVE is not responsible for the content or the reliability of the external websites. Link to PubMed abstract

Related entry: none currently available

Categories: public health
Designing research
Analysing and interpreting
impact on research
impact on researchers
impact on implementation and change
impact of public involvement
journal article
Recruitment
Implementation and change

Date Entered: 2009/01/28

Date Edited: 2012/11/21