Chapter 3 - Gather and analyze information: Analyzing the data you have gathered

Culture Counts: A Guide to Best Practices for Developing Health Promotion Initiatives in Mental Health and Substance Use with Ethnocultural Communities

Before putting together a health promotion initiative, a complete understanding of the intended audience is needed. As information is generated by the community through focus groups and other methods, it needs to be brought together and analyzed by you and your partners.

Along with ideas about what problem your initiative should address and what form the initiative might take, you need to know about the community’s

• cultural norms and beliefs about the identified problem
• culturally mediated stigma towards the problem
• treatment-seeking behaviour for the problem.

Other factors to discuss are the intended audiences:

• English language proficiency
• literacy level (both in English and native language)
• acculturation level (how much they have absorbed of and will respond to the mainstream culture)
• sources of news and other information.

You may have set out with the intention of adapting an initiative to the community. Feedback from the community will tell you whether this will work or not.

Example: The majority of the Somali community is Muslim. Alcohol use is forbidden in the Muslim faith. Therefore, although members of the Somali community acknowledged that there were alcohol use problems in their community, they felt the message of the Low-Risk Drinking Guidelines was inappropriate for them. Instead, a poster about the risks of drinking and driving was produced.

Working with community organizers, determine which approach will be appropriate:

• creating a new initiative or resource specifically for the community
• adapting an existing initiative or resource to suit the community’s needs
• translating and/or adapting an existing product or resource.

To learn more about analyzing research results:

• Community Tool Box: “Chapter 19. Choosing and Adapting Community Interventions” (USA)
• W.M.K. Trochim, Cornell University, “Research Methods Knowledge Base.” (USA)

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