Focus Group Discussion: A Research Method in Community Development

Abstract

This paper is based on recent consensus among development practitioners that for development to be meaningful, it must adopt the bottom-up and community-driven approach. Researchers in community development most often use Focus Group Discussion (FGD) in researches meant to achieve bottom-up and community-driven development through research. They often use this method exclusively or as a complementary tool to collect in-depth information directly from the subjects of a research. For a better understanding, simplified and correct use of the method, this paper presents knowledge on operationalization of focus group discussion as research method in community development. The authors concluded that community development experts, practitioners and researchers need the knowledge as presented in this paper to effectively use focus group discussion to promote bottom-up and community-driven development through research.