A.-K. Lindqvist et al. year. The longer one goes without [candy], the easier it is. 6:3 Yes, if you manage the first couple of months, it is easy. 6:4 Then one is less tempted [to eat candy]. When setting goals, the students emphasized that the goals should not be too difficult to attain because then they felt it was impossible, and gave up without trying. According to the students, replacing a bad habit with a good one, for example, increasing the consumption of fruit or nuts could be a way to reduce eating sweets. They also emphasized the importance of it being fun for them to engage in a health-promoting activity. They also suggested that one could combine different kinds of support, for example using a combination of ICT, goals and rewards. Another suggestion for a combination of support was the use of text messages (SMS) to entice a friend to participate in a physical activity or as a reminder to eat fruit. Discussion of methods We choose a qualitative approach, focus groups and content analysis, to describe and develop an under- standing of adolescents’ awareness and experiences concerning health promotion. Together, the two classes comprised a total of 32 students, 28 (13 boys and 15 girls) participated in the focus groups. This gave good variety in terms of gender and ensured that there was a good possibility that light would be shed on different aspects of the topic under investigation, thereby strengthening the credibility of the study (Graneheim & Lundman, 2004). We believe that the focus groups gave the students the opportunity to share their experiences and that, together, the analysis gave a broad picture of health promotion. We agree with Dahlin-Ivanoff and Hultberg (2006) that focus groups can create awareness, making the process a heuristic one, when both the participants and the researcher learn from each other. When one forms groups from people who already know one another, there is the advan- tage that the participants can relate to each other’s comments about their shared lives, which creates an environment of trust (Dahlin-Ivanoff & Hultberg, 2006). We believe that the open letters facilitated communication in the focus groups and that they fulfilled their purpose as stimulus material. To be faithful to an empowerment perspective, we let the students themselves create the material, instead of giving them a story or a picture to relate to. We used an interview guide comprised of three areas which, according to Holloway and Wheeler (2010), allows informants to describe their experiences in their own words, and thus strengthens the dependability of the data collection. The moderator and the researcher were one and the same person, and that is an advantage according to Dahlin-Ivanoff and Hultberg (2006). During the focus group discussions, the moderator strove to create a calm and trusting atmosphere. The students were aware of their rights and had received both verbal and written informa- tion. Both positive and negative experiences were revealed, which suggest an openness of the partici- pants. According to Raby (2010), focus groups can provide the support required to enable shyer people to speak more freely than they would in one-on- one interviews, but it is possible that individual interviews might have brought out other aspects. All authors took an active part in the analysis of the data, although the initial steps of the analysis were performed by the first author. The inclusion of quotations from the focus group discussions in the results also strengthens the study’s credibility (Graneheim & Lundman, 2004). Most of the quotations take the form of dialogue, and such parts of the discussion are of greater value than individual quotations from participants (Dahlin-Ivanoff & Hultberg, 2006). To minimize the risk of misinter- pretation, the results were presented to the students, as participants’ recognition of the findings can in- crease credibility (Graneheim & Lundman, 2004). In order to facilitate transferability, the research process has been described in detail. Authors can offer suggestions concerning the transferability, however, as stated by Graneheim and Lundman (2004), the transferability of the results to other contexts has to be judged by the reader. Discussion of results The first subtheme in our study showed that the students had extensive experience of using and expressed a need to use their mobile phones and computers. An earlier study by Leung (2003) stated that today’s youth are more open to the potential of ICT and that adolescents use the technology to chat, play games, for downloading material and to visit social websites (Gross, 2004). Thanks to the ‘‘One to one’’ project, all participants had compu- ters. They also had mobile phones and all were active on Facebook. In our study the boys were found to play games more than the girls, while the girls preferred to use ICT for communication purposes, which are consistent with other studies (Jackson et al., 2008; Rey-L o´pez et al., 2010; Shaw & Gant, 2002). We agree with the article published by Lubans et al. (2009), which recommends that future studies of health promotion amongst adoles- cents should incorporate social support strategies, 6 (page number not for citation purpose) Citation: Int J Qualitative Stud Health Well-being 2012; 7: 17726 - http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/qhw.v7i0.17726