Understanding the Research Process Essay

The focus group (a less formal forum) included a medical doctor, two residents, two community members, two family members of the residents, nurses, director of nursing, the administrator, a member of the board of the directors, an IT specialist and human resource personnel. A focus group is a specialized group interview in which group members are not told exactly what the interviewer wants to

Ground Rules: Participation in the focus group is voluntary, that it is all right to abstain from discussing specific topics if you are not comfortable, that all responses are valid-there are no right or wrong answers, to please respect the opinions of others even if you do not agree, to speak as openly as you feel comfortable, and avoid revealing very detailed information about your personal health. (University of Massachuetts, nd)

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

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

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.

The video if part four of a six part series published by the University of Derby, known as, Advanced Qualitative Methods, created to inform students of the advantages and drawbacks of conducting a focus group. The video features, Fiona Holland, Senior Lecturer Psychology, and James Elander, Head of Center for Psychological Research, both from the University of Derby, representing both the benefits and limitations of focus groups. The main benefits of focus groups are the amount of data collected at one time compared to an individual interview, and the ability to compare results from different demographic groups. The limitations

Quantitative and Qualitative are said to be systematic in different design. Both design have to follow a process system that involved defining a principle of research.

At the simplest level, a focus group is an informal discussion among a group of selected individuals about a particular topic (Wilkinson 2004). A focus group is a form of qualitative research in which a group of people are asked about their perceptions, opinions, beliefs, and attitudes towards a product, service, concept, advertisement, idea, or packaging. Questions are asked in an interactive group setting where participants are free to talk with other group members. One of the key defining features of focus groups is that it is a group of interacting individuals having some common interest or characteristics, brought together by a moderator, who uses the group and its interaction as a way to gain information about a specific or focused issue.

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).

The use of focus groups as a qualitative and interpretive method of enquiry comprises of a number of strengths and weaknesses.

The study for this thesis will be exploratory research using secondary data collected by the communication agency, MESH Planning. The agency developed an innovative approach called ‘real-time experience tracking’, which involves three stages of data collection. And both qualitative and quantitative data will be collected and used in this context in order to get an insight of critical incidents.

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