For all you social science folks (I'm medical anthro) I'm trying to get my question guide together for my focus groups, and I'm looking at colon cancer and risk perception, and trying to tease out issues of moral purity - using a symbolic anthropologic/Mary Douglas framework - how illness can be explained/perceived as a moral event, especially one involving such a 'polluting' organ as the intestine and its marginal matter. I'm looking at this in the Jewish populations (all denominations, not just Orthodox) which is based on purity laws, but I want to get beyond the manifest/ritual meanings to deeper levels of values we may have - even if we don't follow all the 'laws'- but not recognize. I'm a bit stumped on how to draw them out in a subtle way - any suggestions?

doc, interesting problem. i'm in a similar field - although nominally in sociology, my supervisor is mostly an anthropologist and i am using mostly anthropological theories, and am studying medicine (reproductive medicine). won't be doing focus groups but rather interviews, but have the same problem of drawing people to the subtle things.
i will think about your question - but right now have a deadline looming, so it coud take a while. am interested what anybody else has to say, too!

Hi Doc2008,

I am also in the medical field, yet not into anthropology or sociology. I will use a focus group in my research as well.
I am involved in training doctors who want to become general practioners and one of the difficult areas is assessing their attitude and values. My experience is that just asking a question for values is not really working. Also there may be pressure upon people to provide the socially accepted values. Normally I work with scenarios: "You see in your surgery a 15 year old who is pregnant from bla, bla, bla, she does not want you do disclose anything. What are your thoughts / what do you do / on what is this based etc." If the focus group is a small and safe group the interaction could really help to disclose different value systems. I think the trick is to keep it small and start with non sensitive issues first.

Individual video of a consultation is an excellent tool; one can see the young doctor perform the consultation and afterwards both the young doctor and the trainer reflect on this. Often value systems can be identified in this way.

As your research is of a sensitive nature would one to one interviews not be an option for you?

maybe aside of focus groups?

Initially I was going to start with interviews then use focus groups to triangulate/clarify issues with focus groups. However upon pilot testing, the focus groups were far more successful, just opened up so much more then the interviews did. So now I'm flipping the design to start with focus groups, and use interviews to find saturation with particular issues that emerge in the groups.
One committee member suggested relaying a story that gets to the value systems I'm looking for and gauging reactions.