Focus groups

Focus groups

1. Definition

   • Is a carefully planned and moderated informal discussion
   • One person’s ideas bounce off another’s creating a chain reaction of informative dialogue

2. Purposes

   • Address a specific topic, in depth, in a comfortable setting
   • Elicit a wide range of opinions, attitudes, feelings, or perceptions from a group of individuals who share some common experience
   • Provides qualitative information that provides insight into how people react to an experience or product.
   • To gather insight to, or raise awareness of, an issue or topic
   • To uncover complex motivations, attitudes or behaviours
   • To interpret previously obtained research results
   • To develop new research questions and issues for further exploration
   • To obtain market research data

3. Procedure

   • (1) Establish the group
     • The group is made up of participants.
   • 2) Develop your questions
     • Your participants should feel he or she are taking part in a free-flowing discussion, exploring a variety of related issues and covering a range of topics on their own terms and in their own time, rather than being exposed to a series of probing questions.
   • (3) Conduct the focus group
     • It is likely that you, alone or together with one or more friends, colleagues or coresearchers, will act as moderator during the focus-group meeting
   • (4) Analyse group data
     • Transcribe your tapes to produce an accurate record of everything that was said in each of your focus group interviews.

4. Advantages

   • Synergism
     • Is a cumulative process in which individual participants react to, and build upon, the responses of other group members.
   • Snowballing
     • Is a situation in which a comment by one participant triggers a chain of responses from others which in turn generates new ideas and topics for discussion.
   • Stimulation
     • Is a situation in which the group setting works to spur members on to express their own ideas
   • Security
     • Encourages group members to express their opinions more freely
   • Spontaneity
     • Refers to the fact that no individual is bound to have a particular point of view or opinion on a subject

5. Uses

   • To identify problems with existing services
   • To learn how respondents talk in their own words about your focus of interest
   • To stimulate new ideas and creative concepts
   • To prepare for a larger study