Table 3.
Questions for Preteen Focus Group Discussions
| Gaming interests and practices (focus groups 1 and 2) |
| 1. What videogames do you like to play? |
| 2. What do you like about the games? |
| 3. What makes the game fun: getting points or getting to the next level? |
| 4. If you were to develop a game for your friends, what would you put in that game? |
| 5. Do you communicate, or have conversations with other people in the game? |
| 6. Do you know the other players? |
| 7. What devices do you use to play (pc, mac, tablet, phone)? |
| Games with an educational message (focus groups 1 and 2) |
| 8. What comes to mind when you think about educational games? |
| 9. What kind of experience, if any, have you had playing educational games? |
| 10. What did you like about the educational games you have played? |
| 11. If you wanted to develop a game to teach your friends about healthy eating, or health, or a vaccine, what would you think about a game like that? |
| 12. If there was a game like that, that taught about HPV vaccination, is that something you would play with your parents? |
| 13. If your parents gave you a game and said, “Look, check out this game. It's something to learn about the HPV, about the vaccines that you're getting at this age,” would that be something that you'd be interested in? |
| 14. What in the game would help you understand about the vaccine? |
| 15. What is some information about the HPV vaccination that you would like to see in the game? |
| 16. What kind of information would make you feel like you could trust that information? |
| 17. Even if the information was being played in a game, would you think that it would be still trustworthy, if it came from a trustworthy source? |
| 18. What do you think your friends want to know about HPV? |
| Knowledge and awareness of preteen vaccines (focus groups 1 and 2) |
| 19. What do you know about vaccines for your age 11–12? |
| 20. What have you heard about the HPV vaccine? |
| 21. Has anyone ever heard of the HPV vaccine before today? |
| Where or from whom have you heard about the HPV vaccine? |
| 22. Have you heard of HPV before today? |
| What have you heard about it? |
| 23. What would make you want to get the vaccine? |
| 24. What would keep you from getting it? |
| 25. What would you want to know most about the virus or vaccine to help you make a decision about getting it? |
| Communication |
| 26. Do your mom/dad ask your opinion about shots or other medical/health decisions, or do they just make the decision for you? |
| 27. Ideally, how would you like to make decisions about your health with your parents? |
| 28. Is there anything that would make it easier? |
| 29. How does your doctor talk with you about your health? |
| Does s/he talk directly with you? |
| Does your parent leave the room? |
| Do you feel comfortable talking with your doctor about anything? |
| 30. If you wanted more information about something related to your health, where would you go to get it? |
| What about advice? |
| 31. If you wanted to learn more about vaccines, how would you do that? |
| 32. How many of you have cell phones? |
| Do you text on your phone? |
| Would you be interested in getting health-related texts on your phone from your doctor's office? |
| What about HPV-related texts? |
| What about reminders to go to your doctor's appointment? |
| 33. What are your thoughts about these messages?: |
| “HPV is a sexually transmitted infection. But there is a vaccine you can get to prevent it!” |
| “If you get the HPV vaccine, it will keep you healthy.” |
| “You need to get the HPV vaccine to keep from getting HPV one day.” |
| Feedback on game concept (focus groups 1 and 2) |
| 34. Creative exercise: If you were to text a message to a friend about HPV vaccination, what would you say? |
| 35. Use your imagination about what this opening scene for our game would look like: “Long ago and far away a land was filled with secret gardens. Now they're gone and no-one knows why…you can find them if you try…the secrets you discover there will help you throughout life…” What do you think this would look like? |
| 36. What would you put in this secret garden? You said magic would be good to have in it? |
| 37. What do you think the garden wizard does in the game? |
| 38. Let's see what you think about this music… |
| Feedback on specifics of the Land of Secret Gardens (focus group 3) |
| 39. What are your overall impressions of the game? |
| 40. How easy/difficult was it to grasp the concept of the game? |
| 41. Did you need any help playing the game, and if so, who provided it? |
| 42. How much effort did you put into playing the game? |
| 43. How much control over the game did you feel that you had? |
| 44. How easily were you distracted or interrupted while playing? |
| 45. What did you learn from the game? |
| 46. What, if anything, made the game fun or interesting to you? |
| 47. What did you like most/least about the game? |
| 48. Were there any activities that were kind of boring? |
| 49. What would you like to change about the game if you could? |
| 50. What did you learn from playing the game that you did not know before you played it? |
| 51. What other things did you want to learn? |
| 52. Did the game evoke any emotions, such as concern, anger, or confusion, and if so, how did you handle them? |
| 53. How motivated would you be to continue to play this game? |
| 54. About how much time would you spend playing? (looking for minutes/hours) |
| 55. How likely would you be to recommend this game to a friend? |
| 56. What can you tell me about the potion? |
| 57. What did it explain to you about how a potion is made? |
| 58. What did you think about the pop-up messages? |
| 59. Did the pop-up messages take you out of the experience of the game? |
| 60. How easy/difficult was it to get to the next screen or find the hidden object in the game? |
| 61. Did you think that the rewards were fair for what you were trying to do? |
| 62. Did you feel like when you were playing the game your performance was being measured correctly? |
| 63. Earlier, I asked a little bit about emotion and you said it's kind of scary because there's a creepy gnome guy. Was it scary also because there was information about HPV? |
| 64. Would you mind talking to your parents about the game or what the game is about? |
| 65. Is there anything else about the game that you think we should know? |