Focus Group Research

Abstract

This essay is both historical and conceptual, first highlighting the origins, tensions, and continuities/discontinuities of focus group research, then arguing for how such research embodies three primary, related functions: inquiry, pedagogy, and political. The quasi-unique potentials or affordances of focus group work are explored, including mitigating the researcher’s authority; disclosing the constitutive power of discourse; approximating the natural; filling in knowledge gaps and saturating understanding; drawing out complexity, nuance, and contradiction; disclosing eclipsed connections; and creating opportunities for political activism. Contemporary threats to focus group work are described, and new research frontiers are proposed, especially in relation to new information technologies. The essay integrates historical, conceptual, and practical perspectives to fully explain the potentials of focus group research, with the goal of advancing a set of understandings about focus group work that attends to its relatively unique potentials for conducting qualitative inquiry across a wide range of topics and disciplinary contexts.

Using simulation to educate police about mental illness: A collaborative initiative

“…Focus groups give participants an opportunity to discuss a topic in greater detail through a group process that assists them to explore and clarify their points of view (Farnsworth & Boon 2010;Kamberelis & Dimitriadis 2013). Focus groups also provide descriptive data that can be used to make decisions about program modification and development (Sagoe 2012).…”

Physical activity and behaviour change: the role of distributed motivation

“…Echoing the claim that qualitative interviews are essentially 'conversations with a purpose' (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2009:5), our focus groups could be described as open discussions with a purpose. In this case the 'focus' (Kamberelis & Dimitriadis, 2014) of the discussion was on issues such as motivation for joining the study; the impact of the voucher and other intervention components on participant behaviour; the nature of any de-motivators to participation, as well as participant views on the intervention in general. Although the focus group generated information on the influence of the intervention on personal levels of physical activity, the researchers also wished to gain insight into group, social, and organisational influences on activity via an exchange of views -and it was interest in the latter that constituted the primary reason for using such groups as an integral component of the research design.…”

Movimiento FabLab: diseño de investigación mediante métodos mixtos

“…Es precisamente esta capacidad de generar ideas focalizadas, la que convierte al Focus Group en una herramienta recomendable para la obtención de ideas de investigación en nuevos campos. Además, se trata de una técnica válida y su empleo es habitual en la generación de datos cualitativos o la discusión de un tema concreto de la investigación (Bloor, Frankland, Thomas & Robson, 2001;Freitas et al, 1998;Sagoe, 2012) y en la generación de hipótesis basadas en la percepción de los participantes en campos de investigación novedosos (Basch, 1987;Berelson, 1952;Byers & Wilcox, 1991;Calder, 1977;García Calvente & Mateo Rodríguez, 2000;Goldman, 1962;Morgan, 1993;Morgan & Spanish, 1984;Morrison, 1997;Sagoe, 2012;Vaughn, Schumm & Sinagub, 1996;Wilkinson, 2004;Wilkinson, 1998;Zeller & Carmines, 1980) La capacidad de los Focus Group para organizar la definición operacional de los términos básicos en los campos de investigación permite la articulación de los mismos mediante hipótesis para su posterior análisis por medio de técnicas cualitativas y, sobre todo, cuantitativas a partir del diseño de un estudio experimental oportuno basado en la información en ellos obtenida (Basch, 1987;Bauman & Adair, 1992;Bellenger, Bernhardt & Goldstucker, 2011;Calder, 1977;Morgan, 1988;Morrison, 1997;Sagoe, 2012;Stycos, 1981;Vaughn et al, 1996). Son múltiples los ejemplos del empleo de esta técnica en las Ciencias Sociales como instrumento de generación de hipótesis que den pie a una subsecuente investigación cualitativa y cuantitativa (Bellenger, D. N., Bernhardt, K. L., & Goldstucker, J. L., 2011;Bloor et al, 2001;Morrison, 1997;Sagoe, 2012;Soci...…”