Evidence Library

Abstract:

This paper describes the first stage of a study of the health and well-being of urban young Aboriginal people carried out by a community organisation. The goal was to enable Aboriginal people to direct and own the research, in contrast to historical poor practice.

Aboriginal health workers contributed to the study design, helping to ensure that the project would work in practice and to overcome the natural mistrust of research in the community.

Community members helped to facilitate focus groups with young people and interpret the results. This proved important to the group discussions and subsequent understanding of what had been said.

The focus groups helped shape the next stages of the project, determining how a survey of young people's health should be carried out and what kind of health tests would be included.

The ethical issues were considered by a newly established group of representatives from the Aboriginal community rather than the university's ethics committee. This made an important contribution to the community's ownership of the project.

Young people were trained and recruited to conduct the survey as peer interviewers. This helped to raise awareness of the study. The authors suggest that the interviewers were more sensitive to subtle signs of a lack of willingness to take part in the project and so less likely to pressurise people into taking part. However, it also seemed that young people were more willing to take part because they had been asked by a peer.

The peer interviewers benefited from learning new skills and increased confidence. They have gone on to play important advocacy and management roles in other community organisations.

The presence of young people at the health service also increased and it seems that more young people feel more comfortable in using the services available.

The authors conclude that involving community members improved the quality of the research by increasing the:

• representativeness of the people who took part via access to extensive community networks
• validity of the findings because the questionnaires were developed and checked by Aboriginal people and because the participants were more likely to trust the research team and therefore more willing to give honest answers.

Related entry: none currently available

Categories: public health
Identifying topics, prioritising and commissioning
Designing research
Undertaking research
Analysing and interpreting
impact on funding/commissioning
impact on research
impact on research ethics
impact on service users involved
impact on implementation and change
impact of public involvement
journal article
Recruitment
Implementation and change

Date Entered: 2009/01/27

Date Edited: 2012/11/20