Exploratory Example

Research question: The Department of Health staff note that members of an immigrant community appear to have higher rates of smoking than the larger community. However, they are unclear why that immigrant community might be more likely to smoke.

Design Component 1: As such, they first undertook a qualitative exploratory study to examine what factors contribute to smoking in a new immigrant community? Specifically, they conducted focus groups with smokers within that immigrant community. This revealed several potential factors and situations that participants felt contributed to their smoking, including: work and family stress, social activities that include alcohol, cultural norms and expectations, and being around others who smoke.

Intermediary research question: Although all four of these factors could be more common among the immigrant population, the qualitative data does not provide good estimates of prevalence of whether these factors are more common in this population than the non-immigrant population.

Design Component 2: As such, they undertook a quantitative study to determine how common these reasons for smoking were within this community and whether the prevalence of these reasons differs from those in the non-immigrant community. This survey revealed that members of the immigrant community reported these reasons for smoking more frequently than then non-immigrant population; and that the immigrant population had different reasons for smoking than non-immigrants.

Insight Gained: The results from this exploratory mixed methods study provided the necessary insights (that immigrants reported a different prevalence and different reasons for smoking) and to justify the need for and design of a specific smoking cessation intervention for the immigrant community that was culturally informed.