Table 2. Qualitative Themes and Selected Quotes From American Indian and Alaska Native Women Participating in a Storytelling Intervention Addressing Oral Health, Northern California, September 2012–February 2014.
| Themes and Subthemes | Selected Quotations from Participantsa |
|---|---|
| Cultural and traditional relevance of storytelling | “I think learning our language and keeping our culture–cultural activities going, and storytelling would be part of that.” [KI–02] |
| Acceptable and accessible format | “But when it’s a story and you’re listening to it, you’re enjoying it more, you’re paying attention to it more and you’re even dissecting the story a little bit more because you know that there are lessons to be told.” [Pilot FG] |
| “I thought it was really informative, like in an interesting way. It wasn’t just someone sitting there saying: take your kids to the dentist twice a year or use fluoride. Like, I thought it was nice. Interesting.” [Community 2, FG2] | |
| “Well that’s the good thing about stories, ’cause they, you know, they can just relate to it, it changes personalities and it helps them remember.” [CAB meeting] | |
| Relevance of oral tradition in light of digital and modern communications | “Well, … a couple visuals, at least a board or just something. ’Cause the story — you know, I think it was like, what, 15? 10 or 15 minutes long. And maybe when — I don’t know, just something to look at or something while he’s talking.” [Pilot FG] |
| “And if you guys are going to do like individual talking, it would be like interesting for kids to see like puppets and stuff like that or — that would make it more interesting for them.” [Community 1, FG1] | |
| “And, but I think is what we don’t do that, and I think we’re used to, you know, like TV messages get, you know, get, you know, sound bites. And so I think we don’t really process traditional stories in the way we did at one time, just because of the other — all the other stimuli that we have in our lives.” [KI–03] | |
| Critiques of characters and messages | “A lot of the parts were good. I mean, the beaver and then with the kids and then with the rabbit, you know, it was all why those characters were in the story and they all had a different message.” [Community 3, FG1] |
| Dissonance between modern concepts and the traditional storytelling format | “There were a few things that just kind of gave me pause with regard to the — being a storyteller, you kind of want to stay within the era and when you jump out of the era and you put things in that are current day, it kind of pulls you out of the story.” [KI–01] |
| “[S]o I would really stress that this is a contemporary story in today’s world but told in the old way, or something like that. Because the kids will say, ‘Oh, they didn’t have fluoride,’ you know. Kids are pretty smart [chuckles], and they would pick up on something like that, I would think. ‘What? They didn’t have fluoride back then [chuckles]!’ But, just, you know, I would definitely say, ‘This is a contemporary story.’ [KI–02] | |
| “I don’t believe that we brushed our teeth traditionally, like way back in the day, beginning of time, I don’t believe we brushed our teeth. We didn’t have to. We didn’t eat foods that caused damage to ourselves.” [Community 1, FG 1] | |
| Concerns over bad behavior by adult characters | “So rather than saying, ‘Auntie gave him a pacifier,’ auntie wouldn’t have given him a pacifier.” [KI–01] |
| “Maybe he [Coyote] should be a kid, yeah, a 12-year-old maybe, not like a grown man, giving kids tainted candy.” [Pilot FG] | |
| “Um, it says, um, coyote’s mother, um, didn’t know, but she was responsible for coyote’s pain. Is that — do you guys feel like that’s ok, or is that a little bit too harsh? Is that making this person, that we want to make the parents — what I tried to do is make the parents look very strong, and you know very able to do these things, but was that making coyote’s mother look — did it put her in a bad light? Is that something that needs to change? Or, was this appropriate for the rest of the story?” [CAB Meeting] | |
| Adaptation based on local audiences and tribes | “Because each tribe usually starts their stores in a certain way, and so it just depends on where the story’s being told as to how you would start it.” [KI−02] |
| “For every tribe has — that I’ve worked with — has some type of trickster, you know, a figure that’s both a kind of a clown and a teacher at the same time.” [KI–03] | |
| Critiques of health messaging and targeting | “I liked the thought that went into it because it shows — to me, if you start telling this story to young mothers and pregnant moms, it kind of brings up the importance that we don’t all know about.” [KI - 02] |
| Moving away from shame and blame | “I think that, often stories are a gentler way of doing health education and not as confrontive [sic].” [KI–03] |
| “And so, you know, so that if there’s no judgment about how we parent, you know, we’re more likely to be defensive. And so I think stories do that work very well.” [KI–03] | |
| Need for messages to relate to diverse households | “Maybe adding male characters into it because it’s primarily a female character base using Coyote. Adding some grandparent characters. Auntie. You already have an auntie but maybe the uncle character, adding those kinds of characters into it so that everybody who hears it can relate something to them, ‘Oh, this is me.’ That’s what a story’s all about, ‘This is me.’” [KI–01] |
| “And I mean, there may be kids out there who are just being raised by dads or kids out there that are just being raised by moms.” [Community 1, FG2] |
Abbreviations: CAB, community advisory board; FG, focus group; KI, key informant.
a
For quotations selected from focus groups, the community in which the focus group was conducted is also identified, as well as which of the 3 focus groups conducted in that community produced the quote (eg, Community 1, FG 2). For quotations selected from key informant interviews, a number identifies which of the 4 KI interviews produced the quote.