Tell me what you mean by "si": Perceptions of quality of prenatal care among immigrant Latina women

Individual perceptions form the basis of many health research reports relat ed to access, utilization, continuity, and quality. Many health care provid ers are not well equipped for designing studies or collecting data with imm igrant populations. In this article, the authors examine issues in data col lection on topics related to perceptions of quality of prenatal care among immigrant Latino populations. The conceptual model is Donabedian's framewor k for quality. Two instruments-a qualitative interview with photographs rep resenting components of quality and a questionnaire-were used for data coll ection. Examples of narrative responses given by women in response to the p hoto-narrative prompts are presented and compared to shorter survey respons es. The authors emphasize the importance of designing research instruments that reflect the perceptions of the research subjects rather than simply th ose of the investigators.