Focus Groups Are More Than Just Interviews

Focus groups are in-depth interviews undertaken with a group of about eight to twelve people. They involve interaction between the participants. The aim of focus group research is to learn and understand what people think about a topic at length and in detail.

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.

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.

Focus groups are a popular method used to capture views and opinions for qualitative research.

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.

These are points that has to be focused on in order to create an environment within this focus group interview that makes the interviewees feel like it is a “safe zone”. In the way we want our analysis to form, we have chosen qualitative above quantitative because it is a way of interacting with the young people, who have been volunteering, and by interacting with them achieving both the answers to the questions we pose, but also their emotions, reactions etc. to the memories that is brought back by talking to other volunteers, who have been in the same situation. This would not be possible if we chose to do a quantitative survey which would focus more on the statistics and the larger numbers of participants, this we are not interested in within this

The research method I chose for this study is qualitative semi-structured interview. Qualitative approaches are often used for exploratory and descriptive studies (Neuman, 2007), which suit the objective of this research. Semi-structured interviews compared to rigid structured interview, allows for a more focused, detailed and two-way communication. Detailed data is very helpful for the inductive nature of this study where data is gathered and examined prior to developing a theory(Seidel, 1998). Compared to focus group, it presented a challenge in terms of data recoding and organization, one-on-one interviews are easier to manage.

Qualitative research is common among healthcare researchers nowadays by the numbers of published papers in health literature. Instruments used for qualitative data collection include interviews, observations, and analysis of documents. Interviews are the most common techniques in health care to gather research information. Focus group interviews are the appropriate tool to be used of being more time efficient as more people can be interviewed for the same amount of time. They also provide a richer source of data. On the other hand, focus group interviews tend to document the ‘public’ rather than the ‘private’ views of the individuals (Grbich

Data collection. Data was collected using five focus groups and completing a short demographic form. “The technique of using group interviews is recommended as the ‘sole basis’ for data collection when undertaking a phenomenological study” (Meadus & Twomey, 2011). By using the group setting, the researchers were able to make the male students feel comfortable and confident. It gave opportunity for them to share their thoughts without any fear (Meadus & Twomey, 2011). This technique is appropriate because it is best suited to acquire human life experiences (Davies & Logan, 2012). The roles of the researchers were defined as being mediator, observer and recorder. The roles did switch between groups but had consistent roles at all times (Meadus & Twomey, 2011). Data saturation is not described in this article.

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

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