Customer feedback focus group with Healthy Marriage and Relationship Education (HMRE) program staff

Appendix a: focus group topic guide

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Appendix A: Focus group topic guide

Thank you for participating in today’s feedback meeting on self-regulation training approaches and resources to improve healthy marriage services for youth. Earlier we provided information about self-regulation concepts and possible training approaches. The purpose of this focus group is to obtain your feedback on these materials and a self-regulation self-assessment tool. Your feedback will help us prepare the materials to be tested in a formative rapid-cycle evaluation. Your participation is voluntary and all of the information you provide will be kept private.

Before we begin discussing you feedback, we’d like you to complete a short questionnaire about your own self-regulation skills. The questionnaire contains a list of statements. Please indicate whether you’ve had problems with these behaviors over the past month. Once everyone has completed the questionnaire, we will begin discussing your feedback. The focus group, including time to complete the questionnaire, should take no more than an hour and 20 minutes.

1. How helpful was the material on self-regulation concepts for understanding self-regulation and its importance for helping youth develop healthy relationship skills?

• What parts of the material were most helpful and why? Least helpful?

2. What suggestions do you have for improving the material?

• Was any of the material unclear?

• Would you have liked more or less information about any of the self-regulation concepts?

• Do you have suggestions for making the material more engaging?

3. How helpful was the self-regulation self-assessment for understanding self-regulation concepts?

• Did the self-assessment help you to identify your own self-regulation strengths and weaknesses?

• Did the self-assessment help you to understand the importance of self-regulation skills for forming healthy relationships?

• Did the questions seem relevant to your daily life?

• What did you think of the length of the self-assessment? Was it too short, too long, or just right?

4. How useful were the training approaches we discussed? For each approach:

• Is the training approach interesting and engaging? Why or why not?

• Is the training approach relevant to your program and target population of youth? Why or why not?

• How helpful do you think the training approach would be for helping you deliver relationship skills education to youth?

• Does the training approach address challenges you face in delivering the relationship skills education curriculum? If so, which challenges does it address?

• Do you have other suggestions for improving the training approach?

Thank you for your feedback!

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