"User Experiences of Spanish-Speaking Latinos with the Frontier Behavioral Health Website"

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About the Author

Raquel L. Dean holds a B.A. in Psychology and a M.A. in English with an emphasis in Rhetoric and Technical Communication from Eastern Washington University. She currently works for Kalispell Regional Healthcare as a School-based Mental Health Worker and plans to obtain her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology in the near future. Her research interests lie in both psychology and technical communication, with topics including: minority mental health, child psychopathology (childhood trauma and anxiety disorders) and evaluating barriers among minorities when accessing and receiving mental health care, by facilitating usability tests to examine information design and observe the users' experience.

Contents

Introduction

Literature Review

Methodology

Test Goals and Objectives

Participants

Scenario and Test Tasks

Metrics

Results

Findings and Discussion

Conclusion

Limitations of Study

Recommendations for Future Research

References

Appendix A: Pre-Test Survey

Appendix B: Recruitment Email

Appendix C: Post-Test Interview

Introduction

This paper will explore the topic of the rhetoric of the way information is designed in the field of technical communication. Rhetoric, in the most traditional sense, is the art of communicating effectively and efficiently, to a specific audience, in means of persuasion or informing. Rhetoric is involved in the way information is delivered to a given audience. This paper will focus on a website that delivers information regarding mental health services. The purpose of this will be to explore how the website is designed, how the content is presented, and the kind of experiences users have when they interact with the website. Individuals can be informed electronically (website, emails, blogs), word-of-mouth (being told by someone who has utilized that service), or through print (brochures, flyers, mail). For individuals to receive mental health services, they must first be informed about those services. There are many variables that may affect their access and availability to utilize these services.

For the purposes of this paper, I define Latino/a based on how it is defined by the U.S. Census Bureau, and the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB): "Latino" is defined as “a person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin regardless of race (2018). It is important to note here that the terms "Latino" and "Hispanic" refer to the same ethnic-minorities description provided by the U.S. Census Bureau—the terms are interchangeable.

Research shows that Latinos are the largest ethnic minority group in the United States and are projected to reach 90 million by 2025 and 97 million by the year 2050 (Shobe, Coffman, & Dmochowski, 2009. & Rastogi, Massey-Hastings, &Wieling, 2012). There are 50.5 million Latinos in the United States, which constitute 16% of the total U.S. population, and 66% of that Latino population are Mexican immigrants (Rastogi, Massey-Hastings, & Wieling, 2012). However, Latinos are half as likely to seek mental health services as Whites. Research has shown that there are system-level barriers (lack of Spanish-speaking service providers, inadequate training in the delivery of culturally competent services), as well as patient-level barriers (different views of mental health and mental health treatment, concern regarding stigma, and poverty) (Adams, 2007).

Empirical studies continue to support that although progress has been made in the field of technical communication, there is still a digital divide. St. Amant and Sapienza (2011) stated that “over the past decade, electronic communication and new technologies have been steadily reshaping traditional communication practices” (406). Technical communicators must pay closer attention to how effective the delivery of their information design products is. According to Parry and Judge (2005) some populations are more difficult to reach with health messages, even among those with access to healthcare and preventative services (Clayman et. al 2010). In respect to the Latino population, its members may not have access and use the same information as non-Hispanics, due to language, cultural, and media-use differences (Viswanath, 2006).

The organization I chose to observe is Frontier Behavioral Health—a non-profit organization that offers individuals, ranging from youth, adults to elderly, access to psychiatric, psychological, and specialist consultation services. This project focused on facilitating usability tests that examined how Spanish-speaking Latinos interact with the Frontier Behavioral Health website. Through the facilitation of usability tests, I observed how the users interacted with the Frontier Behavioral Health website, assessed how the users navigated the website, and located specific information on a website. Frontier Behavioral Health expresses through their mission statement and values, under the “About” page of the website, that they are dedicated in providing clinically and culturally appropriate behavioral healthcare and related services to people of all ages in collaboration with community partners. Through the findings I collect from my usability tests, I will examine how users respond to the design of the Frontier Behavioral Health website.