DOCUMENTARY ANALYSIS OF NEWSPAPER ARTICLES: A TOOL FOR COMMUNITY ASSESSMENT
Background: An essential aspect of community-collaborative assessment and strategic planning is to garner public opinion and to examine the trends, factors and events that affect health and health services in the community. Focus groups are a commonly used tool to acquire insight into a topic of interest. Although a focus group may result in a rich understanding of a community issue, the complexity of group dynamics may bias views and challenge the analysis of information gathered. As an alternative, newspaper articles offer an opportunity to identify the emergence of social perspectives and meaning. Newspaper articles are an easy-to-access source that provides a range of insight from eye-witness accounts to opinion pieces. Documentary analysis provides a method with which to examine the content of written materials, such as newspaper articles, for insight into the social activities described.
Methods: Documentary analysis provided a method to examine articles identified in two local newspapers, the Seattle Times and the Real Change. The key words homeless, homelessness, health care for the homeless and medical respite were used for the initial search of articles that were published from January 1st to December 31st 2012. Once articles were identified, content analysis was used to identify common themes related to the three identified forces of change that impact the development of medical respites: the health care delivery system, community resistance, and available funding.
Outcomes: The key word homelessness initially resulted in 347 articles; 168 in the Seattle Times, 179 in the Real Change. Articles were further reviewed and assigned to one of the common themes related to each of the identified external forces of change. Of the resulting 31 articles, 20 (65%) focused on funding, seven (22%) addressed community resistance to services, and four (13%) mentioned health care systems.
Conclusion: Use of documentary analysis of newspaper articles provided the means to glean applicable content for the assessment. Three forces of change were identified. First, the financial climate is uncertain. While there may be some increases in funding for veteran services, most services have experienced actual or potential cuts in funding or preservation at current amounts. Finding new funding to support a medical respite may be a challenge. Community resistance in the neighborhood to services for homeless people is another potential impediment to address. Finally, there was the likely possibility of improved access to health insurance through the Affordable Care Act. These findings were compiled into a report for a community advisory board to use while considering strategies for the creation of the medical respite.