'A fine line': Mental health support workers strive to define their role: Research notes

Abstract or Summary

Barnaby Pace talks about the use of focus groups and semi-structured interviews, to study the perceptions healthcare professionals and service users in New Zealand have about mental health support workers. He stresses the importance of ensuring that the Maori population was adequately represented in the study. He also emphasises the ethical importance of ensuring that mental health consumers felt comfortable during the interview process. He explains how using a previous mental health service user to conduct the interviews, rather than conducting the interviews himself, and cross-checking to see whether the themes emerging from his analysis aligned with participants' perceptions, were invaluable research tools for his study.