Eliciting local voices using natural group interviews

As part of a 5 year intervention study to improve maternal and child health care, natural group interviews were carried out amongst a minority group of Israeli citizens, Palestinian Arabs of Bedouin origin living in the Negev. This paper argues that the use of individual questionnaires, in this setting, is inappropriate in that it would ignore the views of other household members, likely to be crucial to the parents' decisions about health care utilisation. The interviews utilised the natural groups of women gathering to visit mothers during the first 40 days post-partum, and of men who gather in family or sub-tribal guest sections. Their views on issues concerning difficulties of access owing to distance, social and linguistic barriers and cost are reported. These local views are placed in the wider context of health care provision to disadvantaged ethnic minorities in Israel and elsewhere.