Data analysis
The focus groups were transcribed by a professional transcriptionist who was instructed to label each speaker turn as a separate paragraph. Within Microsoft Word, we used the “convert text to table function” to convert the transcripts into a continuous vertical table of cells with each cell containing one speaker turn. We then pasted these tables into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, adding columns identifying the date and location of the focus group, and numbering each speaker turn, or cell row. Each speaker turn thus provided a unit of analysis for the application of codes varying in size from a single word to several paragraphs. To code these segments we created a column for each code, and indicated the presence of the code by adding the coder’s initials to the intersection of the segment row and the code column. Coding was completed for the larger study and included codes related to anti-tobacco messages.