4.2.1 Social diagnosis
The focus of social diagnosis is to identify and evaluate the social problems which impact on the quality of life within your population. Doing a ‘social diagnosis’ will help you to gain an understanding of the social problems which affect the quality of life of people in your community, and how local people see those problems. This understanding is followed by the establishment of a link between the social problems and specific health problems that will become the focus of your health education activities.
Research methods are taught in the Module on Health Management, Ethics and Research.
Methods used for social diagnosis may be one or more of the following: community forums, focus groups, surveys and interviews.
An example of a social diagnosis would be that in a community the quality of life of the people may be very low as a result of poverty, malnutrition and the poor quality of drinking water.
4.2 Determinants of human behaviour