Qualitative Focus Groups

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.

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.

Qualitative method is using open-ended questioning, non-statistical research techniques, or value-based observations. In this research, three main methodologies are adopted as focus group, distributing questionnaires and conducting personal interviews simultaneously. Methods are all appropriate and contributed to a comprehensive research. The reason is that aim of this research is to acquire an in-depth understanding of

The qualitative research design applied in this study is the focus group interviewing. For this particular topic, survey research design was the most appropriate as it could help obtain the necessary data and information from respondents. Also, the National Institute against Prejudice and Violence used questionnaires to collect data and information in doing the research (Barnes &Ephross, 1994).

The TMDEOhio Focus Group will serve as an opportunity to bring a carefully selected segment of the target audience together for an interactive and spontaneous discussion about traumatic life events. Group face-to-face interviews will provide an opportunity to visualize members of our target audience’s body language, facial expressions and tone of voice when sharing personal life experiences in a group setting.

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

I will interview several of my students outside of the classroom right after a class session in which a particular teaching method was used. I will do some of the interviews individually, some of them in focus groups, and some of them as open-ended surveys of the students who are more comfortable writing than speaking. For the spoken interviews, I will have a set of questions set up involving first questions relating to how comfortable they felt in the groups in the classrooms and then moving into the information they were to have mastered. The interviews will last 5-10 minutes each and will be recorded on the video camera built into my laptop. I will have pre-written consent forms for the students to sign that will allow me to interview them and use the information for my study. Some specific topics I would touch on in the interviews include their perception of their group members, where they would rank themselves with their peers as far as mastery of the material went, their feelings on group work in general, their concept of a leader in the group and if they perceive themselves to be a leader, and the level of confidence they have in themselves

UThe strategy used to enrich focus group participation, comprised of involving individuals who were homogeneous, in the since that they were closely related in age, education level and socialization. Of the participants, one was an African American male and two of them were Caucasian females, all enrolled in a Bachelors degree program, at Texas State University, and socially familiar with one another. The participants consisted of 3 enrolled Undergraduate students, ranging between 19-21 years of age.

The data was gathered by using a focus group methodology combined one to one interviews for the student with Autism. The purpose of using two methods of data collection is based on the action research study design, which takes a series of quick looks at different times in a variety of ways (Johnson, 2012). By using focused groups to collect data, insight is gained on the different perspective of multiple stakeholders on to how to build a comprehensive transition plan that will carry students with ASD starting secondary school into adulthood (Kucharczyk et al., 2015). In addition focus groups use people with similar characteristic who engage in a deliberate discussion about a particular topic . Furthermore the focus group methodology used will help to identify key issues and themes in areas that has limited data gathered (Fontana & Frey, 1994).

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

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

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).

This chapter will phase in the presentation of the findings and the analysis from the focus group (phase 1 of the data collecting process) and the online survey (phase 2 of the data collecting process).

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.