Focus Group Focus Groups

Due to our ever changing culture and diversity, the United States has become commonly referred to as the “melting pot.” Every day this country is becoming more and more diverse and acceptant of other cultures. This is becoming more and more prominent in the workforce as well. Not only are people from all around the globe able find work in the United States, but women are also becoming more dominant in the workforce. Although there is still a lot of speculation as to whether or not women and men are getting equal treatment and pay, many women today are finding themselves suffering from little to no

When you think about women in the work field today, what do you see? A successful lawyer, a doctor, perhaps. That’s true. In fact, there have been more females holding high employment positions in the late 20th and 21st century than ever before. According to Donald M. Fisk in “Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2003”, 60% of working-age women worked in the labor force in 1999. That’s 41% more than that of 1900, where only 19% of women worked in the labor force. Among these women, a vast majority have seen their salaries sky-rocket in the past two decades, almost surpassing those of male workers. However, it is not always this way.

Hello, my name is Lenora Lubega and I would like to welcome all of you to our focus discussion group. I will be the moderator.

Income inequality is still a problem as of 2015 especially for women and racial minorities. Studies show there is a wage gap among different genders, race, and ethnicity. In the United States around the 1960’s, the median full-time working woman only earned 60% of what the median full-time working man earned, and in 2009, 77% of what was earned (Hegewisch, Williams, and Henderson 2011). Women and mothers suffer a great deal in the work force. Three factors that contribute to the wage gap is the motherhood penalty, discrimination in the workplace, and sexual orientation.

According to The New York Times, U.S. Women on the Rise as Family Breadwinners, Catherine Rampell wrote that “four in 10 American households with children under 18 now include a mother who is either the sole or primary earner for her family the highest on record it has quadrupled since 1960”(2). The change of women being the

In 2013, full-time female employee 's made only seventy-eight cents of every dollar earned by men, which means a wage gap of twenty-two percent. Women are nearly half of the labor pool and are equal if not main, jobholder 's in four out of ten households. Not to mention, women receive more college and graduate degrees than men. Women still coninue to bring in less than men. On average, women earn less than men in basically every profession that there is adequate income data for both women and men to estimate an earnings percentage (IWPR, 2014).

A topic that is often debated is whether there is a difference in pay for women doing comparable work with men. It is a fact that women on average make 78 percent of what a man makes while doing almost the same work. The first article discussed delivers evidence that wage disparity does in fact exist by using a first hand account of a woman directly affected by the wage gap’s injustice and correct statistics that are not outdated. The second source does not focus on one type of job, level of education, or length at the workplace that a woman may work in, instead this article attacks women for wanting to spend time with their families and not constantly work.

The purpose of the focus groups was to collect information about stroke survivors’ beliefs, attitudes, and opinions on why they choose to engage or not engage in physical activity. Seven focus groups were conducted with saturation was met. Thirty-two stroke survivors provided responses to 7 questions from a semi-structured focus group guide. Probing was done minimally when needed. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the ensuing focus group data. Focus group discussions or responses were transcribed verbatim. Transcripts were read once and then a second time for clarity. Emerging themes were coded and similar data were group into the same category. Repeating ideas were grouped into themes.

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

The order of these question differed slightly depending on how the interview went. Because of the semi-structured nature of the interviews the informants had the opportunity to express their views in their own terms. In addition to one-to-one interviews, two focus group interviews were conducted. According to Frey and Fontana (1991) focus group interviews include multiple people who have gathered at a centralised location to respond to questions posed by the moderator. In addition, Frey and Fontana (1991) argue that it is a qualitative research technique that is particularly useful when trying to obtain phenomenological data and should be utilised along with other techniques of interviewing and observation. The two focus group interviews conducted

A Focus group is defined as a research technique that collects data through a group interaction, on a given topic from the researcher. Along with this definition are some essential components. Firstly, it states that, focus groups are research methods devoted to data collection. Secondly, it signifies the interaction of group discussion as a source of data. Lastly, it acknowledges the active role of researchers in establishing the group discussion in order to collect data (David, 1996.p.130).

Focus groups are a prominent method of enquiry, regularly used within the field of social science and in particular, qualitative research. The focus group practice involves a number of participants having an open discussion on a specific topic, set by a researcher. The researcher acts as a moderator to aid discussion by using probes to collect desirable data. This process is recorded and transcripts are used to interpret and analyse given information.

Thematic content analysis was used in order to be able to draw conclusions from the qualitative data from the interviews and document review (DeSantis & Noel Ugarriza, 2000). Qualitative content analysis is defined as: “a research method for the subjective interpretation of the content of text data through the systematic classification process of coding and identifying themes or patterns” (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005, p.1278). This means that the data input is evaluated to search for patterns that extend across the data and coded into categories in order to develop data interpretations (Vaismoradi, Turunen, & Bondas, 2013). For this purpose ATLAS.ti was used to analyse the qualitative data findings. Codes were first prepared in accordance with the theoretical framework (for this framework see Appendix B) (Braun & Clarke, 2006). ATLAS.ti was used for assigning open codes as well as to create coding memos. Codes and themes were analysed and related to theory formulation (see Appendix C for the code book that was used in ATLAS.ti) (for a review and practical guide to using qualitative data analysis see Hwang, 2008). For each code, an output was created. This output consists of a file in which all the quotations of a certain code to be put one after the other, these are the passages that are encoded from all the transcripts. This output file then gives a quick

First is focus group method, focus group is defined as a group of individuals providing information in a structured format. A moderator leads the group of about 8 to 14 participants through an open, in-depth discussion rather than simply asking questions to solicit participants’ responses. The group is stimulated by comments from other group members in creatively conceptualizing and developing a new