Evaluating Symptom Management Educational Materials for Patients With Prostate Cancer

• Acceptability of the written patient educational materials, in terms of text size, white space, font, and graphics [ Designated as safety issue: No ]
  
• Formative evaluation of the new educational materials, in terms of the comments made by the focus group participants [ Designated as safety issue: No ]
  
• Validation that the goals of the educational-intervention instruction are being achieved [ Designated as safety issue: No ]
  
• Improvement of the educational-intervention instruction by identification and remediation of problems [ Designated as safety issue: No ]
  

OBJECTIVES:

• To collect formative evaluation data about a new educational intervention using focus groups of patients with prostate cancer.
• To use the focus group data in the master's research paper of a Baylor College of Medicine physician-assistant student who is documenting the process of organizing and conducting the focus groups, enumerating areas where the new materials are deemed problematic, and identifying themes in the comments made by the focus group participants.

OUTLINE: Study participants are assigned to 1 of 3 focus groups according to educational level and ethnicity (i.e., lower educational-level African-American men primarily from the Michael E. DeBakey Veterans Affairs Medical Center (MEDVAMC); lower educational-level Caucasian men from MEDVAMC, Baylor College of Medicine (BCM), or the community; or higher educational-level Caucasian men primarily from BCM or the community).

Participants review written patient educational-intervention materials on prostate cancer and provide feedback to the investigator on the content and acceptability of these materials during a 1½-2-hour focus group discussion. Feedback data are used to revise the intervention materials so that they are appropriate to the target population.