Capturing the insights of family caregivers: survey item generation with a coupled interview/focus group process

The usefulness of qualitative methodologies to augment and enrich quantitative studies is often overlooked. The authors' goals are to describe the qualitative process employed to generate survey items and to compare the results to those of studies that used different methodologies for item generation. The study identified barriers to and benefits of memory assessments. The survey item generation methodology, which involved 24 key informant interviews and 3 focus groups, resulted in the identification of 31 barrier and 28 benefit items. The 34 unique items were rated among the most important by survey respondents. The authors, therefore, present a strong case for generating survey items using informant interviews as groundwork for focus groups.