Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Table 11.2
Type and Number of Users of NCDETECT
User Type
Number
North Carolina State College of Veterinary Medicine Laboratories
(CVML)
1
DPH General Communicable Disease Control Branch (GCDC)
22
DPH Non-GCDC
11
Public Health Epidemiologist (PHE)
10
Hospital user (non-PHE)
26
Local Health Department (LHD)
30
Public Health Regional Surveillance Teams (PHRST)
20
Total
35
11.2 Methods
The RTI Evaluators worked with UNC DEM to identify key informants
associated with NC DETECT (see Table 11.3). Once key informants were
identified, a select number of informants were invited to participate in
interviews.
The evaluators developed a general interview guide that included open-
ended questions organized around the key domains of inquiry for the evalu-
ation. The interview guide was customized for each key informant or group
of informants to include the most relevant questions (end users, for example,
were unlikely to be able to provide meaningful information about the costs
of maintaining the system or the history of its establishment).
Interviews were conducted during the summer of 2007 by the evaluators
in person when possible; otherwise, interviews were via telephone and were
approximately 60 to 90 minutes in duration. Group interviews were con-
ducted for users of similar types who worked in the same establishment; for
example, several members of the NC DETECT program at UNC-CH were
interviewed as a group. All interviews were recorded, with the interviewees'
permission, to ensure the accuracy of the transcripts.
The evaluators created written transcripts from the interview recordings.
They analyzed the transcripts qualitatively by applying a technique known
as
content analysis
, which groups or categorizes large sections of text into
smaller content categories based on explicit rules of coding (Stemler 2001). In
this study, codes were established a priori, based on the themes and research
questions of interest in N'Vivo, a software application used for qualitative
data analysis. One analyst coded the entire transcript set while a second
checked the coding for consistency and relevance.
