Focus Group

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.

This method is applicable to my study because it allows the group of students the freedom to share their experiences, understanding and beliefs of the topic being presented. Focus groups are an asset to my research design because these groups work best for topics people could talk about with one another in their daily lives but do not. Focus groups are not always appropriate for highly sensitive and personal topics to be shared with strangers. However, for the purposes of my research the racially sensitive issues will be open to discussion because the focus group will only have African American students (Merriam,

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

In order to gather a lot of data, a focus group is recommended. According to Howitt D. (2013), an optimal focus group consists of six to ten participants (Howitt, 2013; Morgan, 1997). The fact that an experienced interviewer conducted the interview led to good control and desired data(Morgan, 1996). Furthermore, a thematic analysis provided a systematic overview of the results.

Some of the barriers that the participants discussed were language and being afraid (Olsson and Lau, 2015). This could have been viewed as discrimination and may have caused psychological distress while discussing in a group setting. Another risk is that focus groups do not allow everyone’s voices to be heard, therefore, it may cause additional distress to those individuals who are not confident enough to speak up and let their concerns be heard.

A focus group is similar to that of an AA meeting. For example, a researcher can gather subjects that have problems abusing alcohol and analyze the written information during the whole interview process. This can relate to a narrative analysis where the subjects share their perspectives in their own words. Through these methods, a researcher can gather information about the possible social influences that the person is explaining.

The focus group questions will be descriptive in nature. This type of questioning is used to help establish rapport, and get the perspective of the stakeholders on how they see the problem. . According to Spradley (1979) building rapport means that a basic sense of trust has developed that allows for the free flow of information.

Focus group is a group interview. The group is made up of people with the same characteristics and ask them questions about something or someone. The response they give will be recorded and use as reference when making a decision.

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

If we could do this focus group again, we would try and include a larger collection of participants. This improvement would allow us to hear more insights, and give our group a wider variety of responses. A smaller-sized group may be more personal, but doesn’t offer as much depth as a slightly larger size.

A qualitative focus group provides a mean to collect qualitative information on a target population through the process of conducting rapport style interview (Carlsen & Glenton, 2011; Cohen & Crabtree, 2006). There are several advantages to a focus group. As it allows the researcher to obtain new research information, discover sensitive subject matters that would otherwise be overlooked, find subthemes to categorized their main research topics, and provides a quick turnaround time to gather up research information (Cohen & Crabtree, 2006; Laureate Education, 2014b). The disadvantage of focus group like the one viewed in the video, it does not give all members of the group an equal amount of time to express their concern or rationales. Such will require additional strategies to engage the 'quiet ones ' to yield their ‘voices’ by directing questions towards them to answer (Laureate Education, 2014b). Another disadvantage is that if the moderator does not conduct the focus group appropriately, it can quickly get off topic and lose focus (Laureate Education, 2014b).

Before the session kicks off officially, it would be better if the participants got to know each other. This would provide that group cohesion required for harmony in the course of the interview. Members of the research panel have a tea break in mind to bring together the participants. Before seating down to have a tell-all session, they must be well acquainted with each other. As is the norm, focus groups do not aim at arriving at consensus. The motive is to draw varying opinions and views from participating members. Therefore, the bonding session will enable the members to feel at ease airing opinions that are contrary to other participating members.

Carson et al (2001, p.114) refers to focus groups as “A research technique that collects data through group interaction on a topic or topics”. They also suggest that the central distinctive characteristic of focus groups is group interaction, which generates a mass of data, which would be