To facilitate the focus groups, the 2 group facilitators used a semi-structured written guide that was approved by the Institutional Review Board at PHI. The topics covered were 1) previous experiences with and ideas about the benefits of and barriers to providing a biological sample for use in alcohol research; 2) opinions about providing different kinds of biological samples collected at home and sent in by mail, including blood and saliva, and about different kinds of tests for research, such as physiological (cortisol levels [25] or liver enzymes [26]) and genetic tests; 3) the meaning of participation in such research; and 4) what messaging and information might be provided by researchers to improve participation and encourage the provision of biological samples. This last topic was addressed by having participants respond to a recorded telephone recruitment message and a printed postcard reminder to provide a biological sample. We did not assess participants’ thoughts about participation in alcohol genetics research per se; however, participants were queried about their thoughts about having biological samples collected for DNA. Focus groups were conducted in English and averaged 90 minutes. We followed standard procedures for conducting focus group sessions [27, 28].
