Conducting in person interviews and holding focus groups is a component of
Focus groups are a data gathering technique used in qualitative and ethnographic research, and as such they share many of the latter's assumptions and call for many of its skills. Show
The ethnographic approach to research is one where the researcher studies research subjects in their natural setting, observing behaviour and tapping into shared knowledge. It is most appropriate for studying processes which have a strong social element, such as those which depend on group interaction, and where it is important to take account of diverse views and perspectives. It is used to obtain a rich and detailed view of a reasonably small area as opposed to a wide range of fairly objective data covering a large area: depth, rather than breadth. It is based on an interpretivist theoretical perspective, which sees positivism as being inappropriate to any study which describes humans, their behaviour and attitudes. The role of the researcher is as a participant, either active or passive, and he or she is less "objective" than with quantitative research. The researcher is an observer, and needs strong skills of communication, able to tease out the nuances of meaning and hear messages that are not being verbalised, of interpretation, with the ability to unpack messages, and discern patterns. The most commonly used qualitative settings are participant observation, and the interview. The interview may be either one to one, or within a group. Key features of focus groups"The group interview is essentially a data gathering technique ... that relies upon the systematic questioning of several individuals simultaneously in a formal or informal setting." "Qualitative groups (Dick, 1999) are generally defined as groups of people brought together to participate in the discussion of an area of interest. In market research this would be for example, to discuss a product, brand or advertisement for the purposes of clarifying an area of concern for a client. In social research it could be to discuss an area of social concern." A focus group is always directed by a moderator/facilitator, with varying degrees of control depending on whether it is:
As stated in the introduction to this piece, the terms "focus group" and "group interview" are used interchangeably. In his article "A rose by any other name may smell as sweet but 'group discussion' is not another name for a 'focus group' nor should it be" (Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, Vol. 8 No. 3), Clive Boddy suggests the adoption of two terms, focus group interview and focus group discussion, the one structured and the other unstructured, as defined above. The focus group can also either take place in a formal setting, designated by the researcher and where participants come in response to invitations, or in an informal setting, such as on a street corner, shopping mall etc. There is a benefit in having the group in a familiar setting, which can reduce the sense of "otherness". The defining quality of the focus group is its collectivist nature: in concentrating on the group, it allows for expression of a variety of different perspectives (thereby aligning it to a non positivist, interpretivist approach which allows for multiple perspectives). Not only is it possible to gain access to the experiences of many different individuals, but also because individuals interact with one another, data is enriched as group members spark each other off, enabling views to be reformulated through exchange, nuances of meaning teased out, recall strengthened, and shy members given confidence. Data are enhanced as they are drawn from a social context, and interaction is horizontal – between participants – as well as vertical – interviewer/interviewee. Another advantage of the focus group, and one that is especially relevant with a clearly defined research population, is that it is an efficient way to interview more people in a shorter amount of time than is possible with a one to one interview. As a technique, the focus group has elements of both participant observation and the individual interview, calling for both a questioning style and the observation of group processes. Whether the researcher chooses the individual or group approach for interviews will depend upon a number of factors. Individual interviews are good:
Group interviews are good:
Of course, the two methods can be combined as when a focus group is followed up by a series of one to one interviews with selected participants. Knowing how to combine them is a matter of knowing how their particular strengths and weaknesses will fit into your research design. The following examples show uses of focus groups in both structured and unstructured settings:
History of focus groupsThe focus group as a technique was first developed in the 1920s, mainly to help develop survey questionnaires, although also for other purposes of social research. In the 1940s, Robert Merton and Paul Lazarfield used the technique for group interviewing people about their reactions to wartime radio programmes (see Merton, R., 1987, "Focused interviews and focus groups: continuities and discontinuities", Public Opinion Quarterly, No. 511, pp. 550-566). From that time until the 1970s, focus groups were mainly used in market research, for such matters as brand images, packaging and product choice. By the late 1980s, however, the focus group had become recognised as a social science method in its own right, partly in reaction to perceived limitations of other methods: the individual interview was seen as liable to be influenced by the interviewer, and the closed questions of surveys too limited in terms of depth of data. As against this, quantitative methods have – particularly in the USA – dominated both the social sciences and management sciences, although there is currently much interest in qualitative methods on both sides of the Atlantic, so it seems likely that the popularity of the focus group will continue. Advantages and disadvantages of focus groupsK. Denise Threlfall (in "Using focus groups as a consumer research tool", Journal of Marketing Practice: Applied Marketing Science, Vol. 5 No. 4) provides a good summary of the advantages and disadvantages of the focus group: Advantages:
Disadvantages:
Uses of the focus groupFocus groups are used widely in the following areas:
Examples"Using focus groups to evaluate health promotion interventions" (Kirsten Mitchell and Patrick Branigan, Health Education, Vol. 100 No. 6) describes how to use focus groups in health promotion. "Using focus groups as a consumer research tool" (K. Denise Threlfall, Journal of Marketing Practice: Applied Marketing Science, Vol. 5 No. 4) looks at its use in marketing research. "Using focus groups to explore children’s perceptions of smoking: reflections on practice" (Lorna Porcellato et al., Health Education, Vol. 102 No. 6) discusses the use of focus groups with children. Focus groups are also used widely with the following applications:
How to facilitate a focus groupSkills requiredWe shall be looking further down this page at the tasks of steering a focus group and framing questions, but in general terms the group leader needs to:
Whether or not the researcher and the facilitator are the same person will depend on the project, but if they are it is all the more important to remember the above skills, and in particular to be objective. The stages of group processLike any group, focus groups are subject to certain collective behaviours. Drawing on research done on small groups, Helen Finch and Jane Lewis ("Focus groups" in Ritchie, J and Lewis, J. (Eds), 2003, Qualitative Research Practice, Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA) describe five stages of the group process:
The stages of a focus groupThe facilitator needs to be aware of the different stages the focus group should go through, and how to conduct each stage. Setting the scene and laying ground rulesAs participants arrive, the facilitator should welcome them and thank them for coming. Once everybody is present and seated, the facilitator should provide a brief introduction outlining the purpose of research, laying ground rules (one person to talk at a time, all views welcome, confidentiality) and to stress that there is no hidden agenda, and that all views will be treated in confidence. Next, each participant introduces themselves, giving name and a brief bit of background. The facilitator should make a spatial note of where people are sitting, which will serve as a useful aide memoire when looking at the session notes or listening to the recording. The opening topicThe facilitator introduces the opening topic/question, which should be fairly general, and capable of generating discussion. Attempts should be made to make everyone contribute as a way of breaking into the group. It may be necessary for the facilitator to intervene quite a bit by asking questions, and generally keeping the discussion going. DiscussionWhen the discussion gets under way, the facilitator will need to tread a fine line between ensuring that all points are covered, attending to particular details and noting the odd interesting piece of data that emerges independent of the official questions, and promoting group discussion, between heeding thoughtful pauses and making sure that the discussion does not dry up. Active listening is very important, and they may need to probe at particular points. Ending the discussionIt's very important to end the discussion on a positive note, especially if difficult material has been raised, and also to thank people for coming. Framing questionsThe facilitator will have prepared a guide with a list of topics/questions to be covered, the amount of detail and specificity of which will depend upon the degree of structure desired of the group. It is advisable however to have memorised this schedule in advance, as to read from questions will look forced and inhibit discussion. Questions should be:
They should not:
The number of questions and their detail will vary depending on how structured the focus group is to be, but in general five to eight questions is considered a good number, and these should move from the general to the particular. ExamplesJanice Dreachslin, in "Focus groups as a quality improvement technique: a case example from health administration education" (Quality Assurance in Education, Vol. 7 No. 4) quotes Krueger (1994) as recommending the following format for questions:
An ending question to accomplish one of the following objectives:
Dreachslin also discusses the pros and cons of focus groups. See also Krueger, R.A. and Casey, M.A., 2000, Focus Groups: A Practical Guide for Applied Research, Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA. The Appendix of "Using focus groups to assess student needs" (Britt Anna Fagerheim and Sandra J. Weingart, Library Review, Vol. 54 No. 9) contains an example of focus group questions. "Using focus groups to explore children’s perceptions of smoking: reflections on practice" (Lorna Porcellato et al., Health Education, Vol. 102 No. 6) also provides a copy of the interview schedule in the Appendix. Conducting a discussionLeading a good focus group discussion is a balancing act between on the one hand flexibility, allowing a free-flowing conversation, and on the other structure, ensuring that the conversation does not stray too far from the research objectives, that it remains relevant, inclusive of everyone and not dominated by one person. It is very important to obtain responses from the maximum number of people in the group to get the fullest coverage. Ideally, the discussion should regulate itself and the issues be covered by the respondents without much steering. However, the following techniques will be useful:
ExampleSee "Workplace health concerns: a focus group study" (Annette M. Jinks and Ruth Daniels, Journal of Management in Medicine, Vol. 13 No. 2) for a discussion of the role of the researcher in their focus groups. Design issues of focus groupsThe focus group within the overall research designWhether you are using just focus groups as a research method will depend on whether the technique can answer all your research questions by itself, and whether it alone is an effective way of reaching your target population. It is in any case highly likely that you will want to triangulate it with another method in order to increase reliability. Which other method you choose will depend on the type of data you are trying to collect. You may for example wish to explore some issues in further depth through individual interviews, or you may wish to combine the focus groups with a survey, for which the former act as a method of exploring the issues. In "Consumer acceptance of online banking: an extension of the technology acceptance model" (Internet Research, Vol. 14 No. 3), Tero Pikkarainen et al. use focus groups to test a questionnaire, and to verify the hypothesis that affective factors were relevant to online banking acceptance. "Probing user perceptions of service quality: using focus groups to enhance quantitative surveys" (Gwyneth H. Crowley and Charles L. Gilreath, Performance Measurement and Metric, Vol. 3 No. 2) describes the use of this technique to gain greater depth of data following a survey. One focus group is difficult to generalise from, and you should have at least two, and more if you want to examine the views of more than one target population, say for example employed and unemployed, or people at different levels in an organisation. Generally, fewer groups are necessary for more structured, exploratory work, and more for unstructured work. In "Application of the means-end value hierarchy model to understanding logistics service value" (International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management, Vol. 27 No. 9/10), Mentzer et al. explore the value of logistics in terms of enhancing value perceptions to customers. They held 13 different focus groups each featuring a different product but covering the same broad areas. The moderator introduced a few general topics to get the conversation started, but afterwards let the discussion roam freely as this unstructured technique was felt to be most appropriate to gather underlying themes. Sampling considerations, group size and compositionFor recruitment, convenience sampling (see our companion "How to... design a research study" guide), whereby participants are recruited based on their easy accessibility to the researcher, will be cheaper than probability sampling, although you should consider whether or not this will provide sufficient rigour for your design. Snowball sampling, whereby participants recruit others, may also be possible, and purposive sampling may also be appropriate. See "Community policing and social capital" (Nathan W. Pino, Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management, Vol. 24 No. 2) for an account of how he recruited participants from neighbourhood groups as these were more likely to be sufficiently informed. Care should be taken over the wording of the invitation to attend, particularly if inviting members of an organisation as the invitation can seem like an instruction. Estimates of desirable group size vary between four to 12 and six to eight. It's a good idea to invite more people that your target number in case some don't turn up. A small group may be biassed by existing relationships among participants and silent members, whereas a large group may be difficult to control and splinter into sub-groups. Less than four people will lose the character of a group. The size will vary according to a number of factors:
In determining group composition, it's important to maintain a balance between homogeneity and heterogeneity. In studying disadvantaged groups, reticence may be lessened by ethnic and linguistic homogeneity, and it is generally better to avoid large differences in status and power. For example, when researching issues in an organisation it is best to have different focus groups for different levels, and to select a horizontal slice through the organisation. Homogeneity is particularly important when studying sensitive topics – for example in a study of people's attitudes towards threatened redundancy, you should not include people who don't feel threatened. See "Focus group exploration of firm-employee relationship strength" (Carmel Herington et al., Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, Vol. 8 No. 3) for a discussion of the use of focus groups and how the authors justified size and composition. Group members should all have a degree of commonality in terms of how they relate to the topic, for example if researching reactions to a service, all group members should be users. On the other hand, too much homogeneity can impede discussion as agreement may make people fail to articulate views sufficiently clearly. It is also important to avoid tokenism, for example just one male, one member of an ethnic group. If the group have a demographic feature in common, then it is better that the leader also shares the feature, e.g. is of the same ethnic origin as the group, or, in the case of a group studying issues of female managers, the leader should also be female. It may be desirable in some instances that the group are strangers to one another, as this may make discussion easier. If you find that some people know one another, then get them to sit apart. On other occasions, for example if you are investigating issues within an organisation, members of the group will already know one another. Time, place and other practicalitiesIn setting the time for the focus groups, you need to consider potential clashes with major events, for example, sporting fixtures or major holidays, as well as the needs of your target population. (If researching in an organisation, there may be particular days of the week which are allocated to meetings and it is best to avoid these.) For example, mothers with school age children are more likely to come to an event during school hours, busy managers more likely to show up if the event is organised around lunch time, especially if lunch is provided (see below). If planning more than one focus group, have these at different times to accommodate people's schedules. The venue also needs to be appropriate to the participants. If using a pre-existing group, then there is some advantage to meeting on familiar territory, for example a church hall, or meeting room of a place of work (although in the latter case, the setting should be as neutral as possible). If there are no such places available, then you will have to give some thought to hire of a room in, say, a pub or local hotel – in which case, you need to make sure that you have the funds in your budget. The room needs to be of adequate size and quiet, so that group members are not distracted. Pay attention to the arrangement of the seating – are the chairs arranged in such a way as to facilitate discussion? If you are planning to have the groups back to back, you need to have a second room for the next lot of participants to wait in. It is quite common to offer some sort of incentive to attend the focus group, such as refreshments (which should be offered anyway). For example, publishers of school textbooks offer vouchers for educational material. "Using focus groups to assess student needs" (Britt Anna Fagerheim and Sandra J. Weingart, Library Review, Vol. 54 No. 9) describes how the authors went about recruiting students to their focus group, and how they organised the practical issues. Focus groups onlineNeedless to say, once you remove focus groups from the conventional physical environment there needs to be considerable differences in the design, and despite the growing sophistication of Internet technologies, focus groups in a virtual environment are still a relative novelty. As with any form of virtual communication, the loss of non verbal clues creates a challenge, with the use of probes being particularly problematic as silence has different connotations. Advantages are that people do not have to travel to a particular location, and those who are shy may have a greater degree of confidence. There is the very real plus that data is automatically recorded. Care needs to be taken to create a genuine "virtual space", which should have its own design, make people feel at home and be dedicated, so that it can be free of other distractions. The following three articles, though none of them very up-to-date, discuss virtual focus groups. "Focus groups in cyberspace: using the Internet for qualitative research" (Henrietta O'Connor and Clare Madge, Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, Vol. 6 No. 2) "Designing and conducting virtual focus groups" (Casey Sweet, Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, Vol. 4 No. 3) "On-line focus groups: conceptual issues and a research tool" (Mitzi Montoya-Weiss et al., European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 32 No. 7/8) RecordingAn important consideration is, how will you record the data? There are various ways:
AnalysisThe level of sophistication of analysis may vary – you may feel that a full-scale content analysis (which we shall deal with as a separate topic) is called for, or it may be sufficient to do a more "informal" analysis of the themes. Whichever method you choose, it is advisable to listen to the tape recording or look at your notes, and analyse the main themes and sub-themes, as well as the participants' characteristics. You need to think about how you are going to substantiate your findings: what is the real evidence? Are there particular characteristics of the participants which might affect the data? Are there any particularly strong statements? Does a consensus emerge? Having done this, you can then summarise in a series of statements expressing the main themes. Most of your data will be in the form of text; if you use numerical analysis it should be to give an impression, for example a certain percentage felt... It is not usual to subject the findings of focus group research to statistical tests, although recently analytic methods for qualitative data have become more sophisticated. When you write your report, you should organise according to major themes, noting any significant differences between groups but not writing individually on each group. More detailed analysis should go in an Appendix. In "Workplace health concerns: a focus group study" (Journal of Management in Medicine, Vol. 13 No. 2), Annette M. Jinks and Ruth Daniels describe how they analysed their data using content analysis and "meaning units" or words or phrases that characterised categories. "Recruiting and retaining scarce information technology talent: a focus group study" (Diane Lockwood and Al Ansari, Industrial Management & Data Systems, Vol. 99 No. 6) provides an example of reporting the findings of focus groups. "Using an ANN-approach for analyzing focus groups" (Marcus Schmidt, Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, Vol. 4 No. 2) describes a quantitative approach to analysis of focus group data. ResourcesBooks
WebsitesAs is to be expected, there is much information on focus groups on the Web, much of it from organisations with other main objectives, e.g. advising particular groups, marketing etc. Which of the following best describes a focus group?A focus group is best defined as a small group of carefully selected participants who contribute to open discussions for research. The hosting organization carefully selects participants for the study to represent the larger population they're attempting to target.
What are focus groups quizlet?Focus groups are groups (usually 7-10 people) of unrelated (do not know each other) individuals that are formed by a researcher and then led in-group discussion of a topic for 1-2 hours.
Which of the following best represents the objective of the moderator in conducting a focus group?Which of the following best represents the objective of the moderator in conducting a focus group? Striking a balance between stimulating natural discussions while ensuring the group does not wander too far from the topic.
Which of the following are considered qualitative research?Six common types of qualitative research are phenomenological, ethnographic, grounded theory, historical, case study, and action research.
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