Reproductive Health and Family Planning: A Focus Group Discussion Guide
OMB#: 0990-0421
Date of Expiration: 10/16/2020
Instructions
The young people in your focus group must sign a consent form before they start participating. Because only young people ages 18 to 22 years old will be invited to participate, you do not need to obtain signatures from parents/guardians.
The consent forms will be collected and stored safely. For privacy reasons, you will not collect or talk about any information that can identify a participant during the focus group discussion.
Introduce yourself and your role as moderator.
Describe the purpose of the focus group and ground rules for discussion. The purpose of this focus group is to learn about beliefs and attitudes of young people and their needs and preferences for family planning and reproductive health information and services.
Explain the ground rules. These include being respectful to each other and giving everyone a chance to speak.
Remind participants that there are no right or wrong answers. All answers will be kept private and will not be connected to the people who share them.
Let the youth know that they do not have to answer every question. They should share what they feel comfortable sharing and not feel any pressure to share more. Everyone should have already received information about strategic sharing, so remind them to think about what they learned.
Review the information that is in the consent form.
Explain that the group will first ask participants to share information and suggestions about ways to get accurate and useful health information to teenagers and young adults. After that, the conversation will shift to a focus on access to high-quality health services, such as services provided by clinics.
Teenagers and young adults may seek information that will help them develop healthy relationships, including romantic relationships, and prevent unplanned pregnancies, and sexually transmitted diseases. Our first set of questions asks you to tell us how to make sure young people get the information they need on these topics.
According to the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, no persons are required to respond to a collection of information unless it displays a valid OMB control number. The valid OMB control number for this information collection is 0990-0421. The time required to complete this information collection is estimated to average 90 minutes per response, including the time to review instructions and gather the data needed. If you have comments concerning the accuracy of the time estimate(s) or suggestions for improving this form, please write to: U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, OS/OCIO/PRA, 200 Independence Ave., S.W., Suite 336-E, Washington D.C. 20201, Attention: PRA Reports Clearance Officer
Communication methods and settings
From whom or where did you receive most of your health information related to sex? From whom or where would you have liked to receive health information related to sex? Probes: From teachers at school? At the doctor’s office? From parents? From other trusted adults? From family members? From friends? Credible websites and social media? Somewhere else?
What advice would you give parents on how and when to discuss information about relationships and sex?
What advice would you give health care providers on how to provide better family planning and reproductive health services to young people?
What do you wish you knew earlier about healthy relationships and sexual behavior?
Teenagers and young adults should have access to high quality family planning and reproductive health services. This includes counseling on how to prevent pregnancy (including delaying or avoiding sex); access to contraceptives (also known as birth control); and STD testing and treatment.
What are the most important things to you in receiving family planning or reproductive health services (e.g., privacy, confidentiality, characteristics about providers)?
What would make you more likely to use family planning or reproductive health services?
What would make you less likely to use family planning or reproductive health services? What gets in the way of using these services?
Where would you prefer to receive family planning or reproductive health services? Probes: Where would you prefer to receive counseling on how to prevent pregnancy, including delaying or avoiding sex? Access to contraception, or birth control? STD testing or treatment?
Preventing unplanned pregnancy
In your opinion, if a person your age is in a sexual relationship, what do you think they are worried about? How much do they think about having an unplanned pregnancy (i.e. getting pregnant when they weren’t planning to get pregnant)? How much do they think about getting a sexually transmitted disease (STD)?
How do you think most people your age prevent pregnancy (if they don’t want to get pregnant now)?
The bulleted questions here are for both the women-only and men-only focus groups to get more information about beliefs regarding the role of young men in preventing pregnancy. None of the focus groups will include both men and women.
What do you think the role of young men should be for preventing pregnancy? Why? Do you think young men see their role that way? How could young men learn this role?
How is this different from, or similar to, the role of young women in preventing pregnancy?
In your opinion, when are young people prepared to have sex? What are your thoughts about the timing of dating relationships, sex, and marriage? What things do you think young people take into consideration before becoming sexually active?
Preventing sexually transmitted diseases
If you have received information about contraception to prevent pregnancy, how much information did you also receive about STDs at that time?
What do you know about how certain STDs can affect your ability to get pregnant in the future?
Developing healthy relationships
How would you describe what a healthy dating relationship looks like?
How does adding sex to a relationship change things about the relationship?
Thank you!
| File Type | application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document |
| Author | ASPE |
| File Modified | 0000-00-00 |
| File Created | 2021-01-20 |