title: Split-Session Focus Group Interviews in the Naturalistic Setting of Family Medicine Offices.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  When recruiting health care professionals to focus group interviews, investigators encounter challenges such as busy clinic schedules, recruitment, and a desire to get candid responses from diverse participants. We sought to overcome these challenges using an innovative, office-based, split-session focus group procedure in a project that elicited feedback from family medicine practices regarding a new preventive services model. This procedure entails allocating a portion of time to the entire group and the remaining time to individual subgroups. We discuss the methodologic procedure and the implications of using this approach for data collection.
  
  
  METHODS
  We conducted split-session focus groups with physicians and staff in 4 primary care practices. The procedure entailed 3 sessions, each lasting 30 minutes: the moderator interviewed physicians and staff together, physicians alone, and staff alone. As part of the focus group interview, we elicited and analyzed participant comments about the split-session format and collected observational field notes.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The split-session focus group interviews leveraged the naturalistic setting of the office for context-relevant discussion. We tested alternate formats that began in the morning and at lunchtime, to parallel each practice's workflow. The split-session approach facilitated discussion of topics primarily relevant to staff among staff, topics primarily relevant to physicians among physicians, and topics common to all among all. Qualitative feedback on this approach was uniformly positive.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  A split-session focus group interview provides an efficient, effective way to elicit candid qualitative information from all members of a primary care practice in the naturalistic setting where they work.
authors.affiliation: Department of Family Medicine, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan mfetters@umich.edu.
authors.forename: Michael D
authors.initials: MD
authors.lastname: Fetters
authors.affiliation: Department of Family Medicine, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan.
authors.forename: Timothy C
authors.initials: TC
authors.lastname: Guetterman
authors.affiliation: Power Marketing Research, Ann Arbor, Michigan.
authors.forename: Debra
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Power
authors.affiliation: Department of Family Medicine, University of Colorado, Denver, Colorado.
authors.forename: Donald E
authors.initials: DE
authors.lastname: Nease
mesh_terms: D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D005194:Family Practice; D017144:Focus Groups / Q000379:methods*; D006282:Health Personnel / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D011320:Primary Health Care; D036301:Qualitative Research; D017132:Workplace / Q000523:psychology*
keywords: clinical study; family practice; focus groups; primary health care; qualitative research; research design; research methodology