For reasons of confidentiality, it is not possible, to conduct focus groups with vulnerable populations such as IDUs, thus in the RPAR, focus groups are only conducted with system or interactor level actors.  Three groups are convened, the first consisting of law enforcement personnel; the second, of risk interventionists such as outreach workers, public health providers and the like; and the third, of drug treatment providers and clinicians treating drug users.  Focus groups in the RPAR are used for discovering opinions, information, and behaviors that the rapid assessment team may not be aware of, or issues uncovered by existing data.  Group discussions are also a valuable tool for validating, triangulating, and crosschecking findings from other data and hypotheses.

Three different types of key informants are interviewed in the RPAR, with each type providing a partial view of the implementation of law and policy and the health environment. 

“Systems” level key informants are those individuals who have a good overview of various systems which may impact the population in question.  In the original, IDU-oriented scheme of the RPAR, these participants include judges, police chiefs, pharmacy owners, city-level health officials, clinic directors, City Councilors and the like.  While a Systems level key informant may have little contact with IDUs, they provide important macro-level information about the functioning of the social and civil systems that affect IDUs and provide access to general indicator information about IDUs, the policy environment within each system, and how laws and policy are formally or informally put into practice.

“Interactor” level key informants are those who interact with the population on a regular basis within the legal, criminal justice, public health, and health care systems and provide information about how each system works at a practical level. For IDU populations, interactor level key informants include police officers, pharmacists, defense attorneys, drug treatment counselors, and workers in NGOs.

“Street” level key informants are members of the studied population (such as injection drug users) themselves, who provide information on their daily interaction with structural factors that influence their health, such as law enforcement, legal, public health, and drug treatment systems. The interviews in this context focus on the respondent’s knowledge of the social and local meaning of risk behaviors, law enforcement practices, formal and informal policies, and health consequences of those practices on the street.

Within each category of key informant, those conducting the RPAR attempt to interview a range of people.  Suggested “targets” are included in the tables below in order to assure the diversity of opinion and experience within the sample. 

• System and Interactor Interviews for IDU Contexts

• Street Informant Interviews in IDU Contexts
  

Where individual interviews are meant to generate maximally diverse data, focus groups rely on the group dynamic and often achieve group consensus quickly. Taken together, the focused data from groups and the range of data from individual interviews paint a more complete picture of policy environment. 

Last Updated: February 2006