Asking Effective Questions

The focus group (a less formal forum) included a medical doctor, two residents, two community members, two family members of the residents, nurses, director of nursing, the administrator, a member of the board of the directors, an IT specialist and human resource personnel. A focus group is a specialized group interview in which group members are not told exactly what the interviewer wants to

Focus groups provide a rich and detail source of information. The purpose is to discover how they feel about a product, concept, idea or organisation. The views of one person may become the stimulus for another’s ideas or may start a useful discussion. People tend to be encouraged to talk when they realise that others have similar experiences and attitudes.

A focus group can be defined as a group interview- centered on a specific topic and facilitated and co-ordinated by a moderator or facilitator- which seeks to generate primarily qualitative data, by capitalizing on the interaction that occurs within the group setting. The idea behind the focus group method is that group processes can help people to explore and clarify their views in ways that be less easily accessible in a one to one interview. While the focus group opens up exciting analytical possibilities, it also gives rise to a number of potentially problematic issues in this respect.

Ground Rules: Participation in the focus group is voluntary, that it is all right to abstain from discussing specific topics if you are not comfortable, that all responses are valid-there are no right or wrong answers, to please respect the opinions of others even if you do not agree, to speak as openly as you feel comfortable, and avoid revealing very detailed information about your personal health. (University of Massachuetts, nd)

Facilitating focus groups, interviews, allowed us to strengthen our qualitative research skills. As an outsider, the qualitative process was the most enjoyable to me. I was able to learn their way of living, strengths and challenges of their community. The process of creating the pretest and posttest surveys collectively was a challenge, yet another beneficially learning experience. I realized effective surveys take time to develop and need to be reviewed by multiple people. Developing poorly constructed questionaries’ is highly possible if no one takes the time to actually

Focus groups can be an excellent way to collect data and be able to identify if the interventions have an effect on the clients (Stringer, 2007). I’m interested

Flexible and inexpensive, focus groups consist of six to ten participants (Hartman, 2004, p. 408). Additionally, a moderator guides the discussion among its panel members that allows researchers to observe real-time verbal responses and nonverbal cues (Hartman, 2004, p. 402; Cooper & Schindler, 2014, p. 160). Focus groups moderators also have the ability to introduce new ideas to gain a greater understanding of concerns from respondents (Hartman, 2004, p. 402). However, a concern with focus group is the lack of anonymity due to the face-to-face participation.

This article represents a focus group type of qualitative research. According to Qualitative Research Consultants Association (2015), in focus group qualitative research, a group of individuals who share a need, life circumstance, or habit relevant to the research issue(s) at hand are led in a discussion by a modulator. The focus group discussions often include between two to ten respondents, and are often held face to face. They can also be conducted remotely through videoconferencing, teleconferencing, or

Each interview and focus group audio was transcribed within 24 hours by a research assistant. Data analysis was conducted using the Statistical package for social science to analyze the data set collected from the

Jemma, the researcher and focus group moderator, has structured the discussion in the following way: to start with, Jemma provides a frame of reference for the focus group referring to the aim of her research, and summarizes the pre-formulated research questions that serve as openings to obtain such feedback (Nel, Romm, & Tlale, 2015). Focus groups are seen as providing a unique data source, and tend to emphasise their value in exploring participants’ knowledge and experiences and in helping to understand not only what people think, but also why they think the way they do (Greenwood, Ellmers, & Holley, 2014).

Bloor, Michael, Jane Frankland, Michelle Thomas, and Kate Robson. (2001). Focus Groups in Social Research.

The video if part four of a six part series published by the University of Derby, known as, Advanced Qualitative Methods, created to inform students of the advantages and drawbacks of conducting a focus group. The video features, Fiona Holland, Senior Lecturer Psychology, and James Elander, Head of Center for Psychological Research, both from the University of Derby, representing both the benefits and limitations of focus groups. The main benefits of focus groups are the amount of data collected at one time compared to an individual interview, and the ability to compare results from different demographic groups. The limitations

The researcher felt that was the nature of focus group but to a larger degree a behavior of human nature, especially in groups where the participants know each other and work together. Therefore to head off a loss of control of the groups the participants were asked to rate topics that were popular in similar focus groups (Levy, Mandell and Schultz 2009; Pellicano et al. 2014). The strategy was used to integrate the topics into the focus groups that participants

Thank you for your participation. Your participation is voluntary and the statements made in the focus group interview have no relationship to or influence on your current or future study or your work and responsibilities. Your participation in this study will be kept confidential by the researcher.

The use of focus groups as a qualitative and interpretive method of enquiry comprises of a number of strengths and weaknesses.