Haiti 2012: Focus Groups!

On Monday and Tuesday,we started doing our focus groups for the PTSD project! On Monday, we ended up getting 9 men out of the 16 men we had recruited, which was the perfect amount. They gave us good feedback on the questionnaire, and it was successful! For Tuesday, we had recruited 21 women, and were expecting about half, but were prepared for more, just in case. We were sure that we'd have many more women because they seemed more eager than the men during recruiting. Surprisingly, only 1 woman showed up! We then went back out to recruit whoever we could in the area, and ended up with 5 women for the focus group. Even though it was a little small, we got some great feedback and they were all very willing to share their personal stories about the earthquake. The women definitely have gone through a lot of stress as a result of the earthquake- many women talked about how they do their daily duties because they have to, but they don't find the same joy in their daily activities and never feel like dressing up or doing anything nice anymore. However, it seems like most of the women have turned to religion and they all said that it is God that keeps them alive and functioning every day, and that without God, they would be lost. It was really interesting to see how they cope with their stresses and what a huge role religion plays in their coping mechanisms. Today we are translating all the recordings from the focus groups. We'll be recruiting more people at the end of the week and we'll do 2 more focus groups on Monday and Tuesday of next week. I'm excited to read the translations and see what else we find after the focus groups next week.

Pictures!