Focusing Children in Focus Groups

Abstract

Purpose: Focus groups are one of the widely used qualitative research methods. It is defined as a carefully planned discussion with a small group of people designed to obtain perception on a defined area of research interests in a permissive and non‐threatening environment. This technique is widely used in social sciences and marketing with adult participants but rarely used with children. We tried to assess how effective this technique could be to find out the daily living activities of children with and without low vision. Methods: A well‐structured script and a question route having questions on daily living activities were developed in best possible child friendly language. The children were approached through teachers. The children of a given age group were given information sheets and consent forms a week prior to focus groups. The teachers were asked to select 4–8 children randomly among those children who had parental consents. The focus groups were conducted in a quiet room by two moderators. The group discussions were audio recorded and the non verbal responses during the discussion of the children were noted down. Results: There were 81 participants (boys 57% and girls 43%) from seven schools, a centre for the visually‐impaired, and a leisure centre in Wales. The age range was between 5 to 17 years with mean age of 11 years. In total 13 focus groups were conducted, seven with visually impaired children and six with normally sighted children. The focus groups resulted in 15 h of recorded discussions demonstrating how readily the children talked. All the children actively participated and readily responded to all structured questions and openly discussed issues. In the groups with a wider age range, the older children tended to dominate. There was no difference between mixed gender and single gender groups in discussion. Younger children tired and lost interest after half‐an‐hour whereas older children were still participating up to 1 h. There was no obvious difference in quality of discussion between children with and without visual impairment. The children were found to be more comfortable to talk with friends than with strangers. Conclusion: A careful selection of the structured questions and a skilled moderator could make focus groups with children a very effective tool of qualitative data collection.