By identifying the types (e.g., use of heroin, misuse of prescription opioids) and the extent of opioid misuse, and the populations and areas most affected, you can better understand the actual problem in your community.
Examine your quantitative data to see if specific groups of people or other factors stand out. For example:
- Are most heroin users young men?
- What proportion of overdoses in the community are nonfatal versus fatal?
- What specific substances are being used when overdoses occur?
Look for trends in your data that may suggest factors that influence opioid misuse and/or intervening variables.
Example: Say there was a sharp rise in opiate overdoses in the past year.
- What happened or what changed that may explain this?
- Did your community see an influx of an at-risk population?
- Was there an increase in heroin purity levels?
- Did any critical services accessed by the target population shut down or experience budget cuts?
Examine local data in relation to state data to determine if there may be something unique or unusual about the community associated with opioid misuse or its intervening variables.
- Is there something different about the problem in your community?
- Does the difference point to an intervening variable that may be important, or perhaps to a strategy to consider later in the process?
To increase confidence in the process of qualitative data analysis, it is best to have two or more people do the analysis independently:
- Read and reread the materials
- Identify the different themes that emerge for each question
- Have coders compare their themes
- If the themes differ, have coders reconcile their views and reach consensus
- Record and report comments for each theme
- Count the number of respondents who mentioned each theme (which is a primary indicator of its importance to participants)
Compare the quantitative data with the qualitative data to see if they reinforce one another or raise new questions.
- Example: If the police chief tells you that the number of opioid overdoses has been unchanged for the past five years or more, but state and/or local hospital, ED, and death data show that overdoses have increased, what is the source of the discrepancy?
Analyzing the data you collect during the assessment process will help you answer the question, “Why is opioid misuse happening here?” This can help you select strategies that get to the unique root causes of opioid misuse in your community.