3 Focus Group Protocol

Focus Group Protocol

OMB No.: 0925-0645

Expiration Date: 12/31/2014

Collection of this information is authorized by The Public Health Service Act, Section 411 (42 USC 285a). Rights of study participants are protected by The Privacy Act of 1974. Participation is voluntary, and there are no penalties for not participating or withdrawing from the study at any time. Refusal to participate will not affect your benefits in any way. The information collected in this study will be kept private to the extent provided by law. Names and other identifiers will not appear in any report of the study. Information provided will be combined for all study participants and reported as summaries. You are being contacted by advertisement and have chosen to contact us to complete this instrument so that we can explore motivations for engaging in physical activity.

Public reporting burden for this collection of information is estimated to average 90 minutes per response, including the time for reviewing instructions, searching existing data sources, gathering and maintaining the data needed, and completing and reviewing the collection of information. An agency may not conduct or sponsor, and a person is not required to respond to, a collection of information unless it displays a currently valid OMB control number. Send comments regarding this burden estimate or any other aspect of this collection of information, including suggestions for reducing this burden to: NIH, Project Clearance Branch, 6705 Rockledge Drive, MSC 7974, Bethesda, MD 20892-7974, ATTN: PRA (0925-0645). Do not return the completed form to this address.

Welcome and thank you for taking the time to be with us today. We asked you here because we are studying what makes people feel happy in their daily lives. We will start with some questions about how you spend your time every day, and what makes you feel good.

• Broad questions about values ~ Understanding the “big picture,” salient, important things in people’s lives

1. What in your life makes you happy?

   1. What activities do you do in your daily life that make you happy?

2. What in your life makes you feel successful?

   1. What activities do you do in your daily life that make you feel successful?

3. If you could experience your perfect day, what would it look like? What would you do? How would you feel? Who would be in it?

   1. What gets in the way of having those experiences (of the “perfect day”) on “normal” days?

4. On a day to day basis, what types of things are in the forefront of your mind? What are your daily goals or the things you value on a daily basis?

   1. When you wake up in the morning, what do you think of first? Next?

   2. What is most important to you each day? What types of things do you value most?

5. On a day to day basis, what types of things get in your way of completing what is most important?

   1. Why do those things get in your way?

6. On a day to day basis, what types of things help you to do what is most important?

   1. Why do those things help?

Now that we’ve talked about your daily life and what you value most about it and want to achieve, let’s change course and just talk more about physical activity and exercise.

• Broad questions about PA

  1. When you think about exercising/being physically active, what is the first concept/word/image/feeling that pops into your mind?

     • What counts as physical activity?

     • Tell us a little more about how you feel about being physically active or exercising.

     • What about physical activity makes you feel that way?

Physical activity and exercise may or may not fit in with the things we talked about earlier as the things that are most important to you on a day to day basis. We’d like to hear a little bit more about whether physical activity fits in with the things that are most important to you and how being more active might work for or against other parts of your life.

• Understanding barriers

  1. How does (would) being physically active or exercising interfere or compete with what is most important for your day and your daily responsibilities?

     • How does (would) being physically active help you to achieve your daily goals or “to-do’s”?

     • What makes physical activity hard/easy to do on a daily basis?

  2. If you were going to prioritize exercise/PA in your life, where would it sit on your list of priorities? Near the bottom or the top? Why?

  3. What are some specific ways you fit PA into your life?

     • Follow-up, specifically for inactives, but just in case with actives: What are some specific ways you could fit PA into your life

     • Follow up, specifically for actives, but just in case with inactives: What are the specific things you [could] do to fit physical activity into your life

INTRODUCTORY CONTEXT FOR PA ADS:

Exercise and physical activity are getting a lot of attention in the media these days. Now that we’ve talked a bit about your own experiences with exercise/PA we want to get a better understanding of how you feel and what you think about when you see information or advertisements about exercise/PA.

• Response to 3-4 current public health ads/messages about PA

  1. When you look at this ad, what is the first word/thought/feeling that pops into your mind?

  2. How does this ad/message make you feel?

     • How does this ad make you feel about yourself?

     • How does this ad make you feel about your body?

     • How does this ad make you feel about being physically active?

  3. Does this motivate you to be physically active? Why or why not?

     • How does this ad motivate you to be physically active in your daily life?

     • How does this ad de-motivate you to be physically active in your daily life?

  4. How does this ad connect with the things that are most important to you?

     • In what ways does this ad feel irrelevant to the things that are most important to you?

     • How does this ad connect to the things that you have to deal with in your daily life?

       • In what ways does this ad feel irrelevant to the things that you have to deal with in your daily life?

  5. If you could tell the ad designers your best advice anonymously about how to better speak to people through their physical activity ads and how to better help people want to be physically active/like it/fit it into your busy day – what would you tell them to do?

4