In late 1993, the Ministries of Health of the Governments of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan initiated the Reproductive Health Services Expansion Program (RHSEP) with funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and technical assistance from the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs (JHU/CCP), The Futures Group, AVSC International, and the Johns Hopkins Program for International Education in Reproductive Health (JHPIEGO). USAID did not include the fifth Central Asian Republic, Tajikistan, in the RHSEP due to political instability in that country at the time.
When the RHSEP was created, providers were the primary source of available information about contraceptive services and practices in Central Asia. Relatively little was known about: clients knowledge of and experience with contraception; their attitudes toward family health; or the social, cultural, and religious values surrounding contraceptive practices. To address this issue, JHU/CCP designed exploratory research to develop a better understanding of the audience for contraceptive promotion programs in the region. The study used focus group discussions to identify the parameters of public discourse surrounding these relatively unknown issues and to gather verbatim comments from members of a project's intended audience that could be used in
subsequent project communication materials.
Field work was coordinated in all four republics by Expert Sociological Center, a private research firm based in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Interviewers fluent in local dialects were employed to conduct the discussion sessions. A total of 888 married men and women participated in 96 focus group discussions in major cities and peri-urban areas (oblasts) of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkmenistan. Eight separate focus group sessions were held in three
oblasts (counties) in each country with participants representing specific target populations of the RHSEP. In addition, a pilot study was conducted in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and the surrounding peri-urban area during December 15-27, 1993. The purpose of this study was to test the feasibility of the larger project, to train Expert Sociological Center in the use of focus group methods, and to refine the research instruments. One-hundred and three married men and women participated in 12 focus group sessions during the pilot study (Storey, Ilkhamov & Pogrebov, 1994)