How Appropriate Were The Various Sampling Design Decisions?

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

“Problems researched with the use of appropriate methods greatly enhance the value of the research.” (Sekaran, 2003) Data can be collected through interviews, questionnaires, observations, and through other techniques, like projective tests. In even more detail, interviews can be conducted in a variety of different ways such as over the phone, through the computer, interviews through the electronic media, and face-to-face. Questionnaires can be conducted personally or administered electronically. “Interviewing, administering questionnaires, and observing people and phenomena are the three main data collection methods in survey research.” (Sekaran, 2003) As stated before, data can be collected in many different ways; however the value of the research is only greatly enhanced when personal opinions and bias is left out of the collection of data.

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.

A. Sampling is a selection of a smaller percentage of individuals from within a larger population that is used to estimate the attitudes and characteristics of the whole population. Sampling saves time and money which is always a good thing, and allows for more manageable research. It may be almost impossible to identify every member of a population/group some may be too large, for example, if you were conducting a study on high school students as to whether they bring lunch to school or eat at the cafeteria, and this research was conducted for the entire state of Texas. Well, it would take an enormous amount of manpower and money to survey every single high school student in the state plus you would have other factors to consider as well. Then you would run into managing issues with such a large endeavor, so choosing a sample or small representation of individuals from the larger population is more

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.

To comprehend why focus groups are famous, and where they are suitably utilized, we investigated a portion of the suppositions that underlie the utilization of focus groups as a method for information accumulation. In particular, we needed to see whether there is a "group contrast" in the sort of reactions a group interview produces compared and an individual interview. We additionally examined a few contrasts amongst the group and individual interview members, as far as

Group work also helps researchers tap into the many different forms of communication that people use in day-to-day interaction, including jokes, anecdote, teasing, and arguing. Gaining access to such variety of communication is useful because people 's knowledge and attitudes are not entirely encapsulated in reasoned responses to direct questions. Everyday forms of communication may tell us as much, if not more, about what people know or experience. In this way focus groups reach the parts that other methods cannot reach, revealing range of understanding that often remain unexploited by more straight data collection techniques.

Focus groups are organised, group discussions between group members and the researcher, and are most suitably used for exploring specific topics, on points of view, exploring attitudes and personal experiences in order to obtain data. In contrast to interviews that asks a specific set of questions. The role of the focus group researcher is essentially to steer the direction of group discussion or to provoke participation through further questioning when all seems flat. The researcher needs to collect data, during the discussion. Also, prevent an individual participant from dominating the discussion and encourage the more reserved participant. Finally the researcher must at all times ensure flexibility, objectiveness and empathy and analyse collected data for the report. According to Forsyth (2010, p. 130) Tuckmann and Jensen’s (1977) model of characteristics within a group, consist of four stages of process, the first or initial stage, ‘forming’ is when individuals within the group have not articulated any view and have little trust and no conflict is present, however, there is an element of apprehension. The second stage, ‘storming’ takes place as participants in the group start to become less apprehensive, more trustful and start to assess each other through subtle and not so subtle arbitration, exploring their

This paper introduces focus group methodology, gives advice on group composition, running the groups, and analysing the results. Focus groups have advantages for researchers in the field of health and medicine: they do not discriminate against people who cannot read or write and they can encourage participation from people reluctant to be interviewed on their own or who feel they have nothing to say.

Within a focus group, participants often debate and question each other’s viewpoint – which is important for this research study as one will be able to see biases and whether specific factors drive viewpoints. While considering the advantages of a focus group, one must also take into account the disadvantages of a focus group, which include: the amount of time it takes to organize; the amount of time it takes to record and transcribe the session; the likelihood for participants to interrupt each other; the possibility of having a number of participants being more assertive and dominant than others; more potential of discomfort; and finally the cost of conducting a focus group (Bryman,

The basis of sample surveying is to use a representative selection within a population to define the larger population as a whole. The sample survey should therefore reflect the characteristic make-up of the wider population and where

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

Another kind of sampling strategy that could also be used in this type of research is convenience sampling. Say for example there were 8,030 undergraduate students at Bangor University, as a researcher, the aim here would be to see how many of those were in paid employment. Each of these students were known as a unit. “In order to select a sample (n) of students from this population of 10,000 students, we could choose to use a convenience sample.” (Laerd Dissertation 2012). For this strategy we would not be using the whole 8,030 undergraduate students, as a researcher only a certain amount of people would be picked and by doing this basically, would be done by inviting all undergraduate at random to a talk which would explain all what they would be involved in. Either of these different sampling strategies could be used for this type of research proposal as they fit the crisis needed to find what