Using Focus Groups In Counseling Profession

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.

I attended the group session on March 26, 2017. The counseling group session was conducted in office and it last about 45 minutes. The setting was counseling therapeutic activity group. Therapeutic activity group is to assist a client who need assistant with developing insight, coping or social skills etc. The group is a closed group and it is a homogenous group.

Focus groups: Discussion of selected members (a mix of parents, teachers, academicians and psychologist) in a focus group will help the company gain insight about what the customers are think and how they perceive the product (Kotler, 2000). This will also help in identifying any gaps between the product presently available in the

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,

At the end of the twelve week implementation, the Residential Assistant used researcher-designed guided questions to conduct two focus group interviews. Out of the participants, twelve NCLP’s and six nurses were interviewed. This was because the interviews could only take place with those who were off duty. All interviews were then recorded on tape, with permission, to ensure that no information would go amiss (Kwong et al., 2011). Focus groups are a technique of group interviewing that exploits communication between research members in order to gather together information (Kitzinger, 1995). Focus groups are predominantly beneficial for exploring people’s knowledge and experience and it is extensively used to examine people’s experiences of health facilities and can be an effective method for exploring the attitudes and requirements of staff (Basch,

The planned data collection method is a focus group, which emerged in the 1940s by Merton and Fiske (Cohen & Crabtree, 2006). This study will use focus group as a primary data collection (Millward, 2012). Cohen and Crabtree (2006) defined focus groups as “data collection method, [where] data are collected through a semi-structured group interview process.” According to Greenbaum (1993), the focus group has been used since the late1960s. A focus group is “a qualitative research (…) you do not obtain results with percentages, statistical

Focus group is an increasingly common research tool used to obtain the options, values and beliefs from an identifiable group using a facilitated interview technique.

As the title suggests, I would form a counseling style group based upon teens that have emotionally non-existent parents. I feel that in current day society, parents can be present in their kid’s lives, however, they are not always emotionally present for their kids. In my group, I would specifically target teenage boys between the ages of 13-19, the group size ranging from 8-10 members. The group is open to any boy that has parents that are dealing with a struggle with their parents, whether that is a lack of physical parents or the lack of the emotional side of parents. The group will be a medium term group, the group will meet once a week for 1 hour for 9 weeks, at either a local church, or office space.

As I look back to the beginning of the class and recall the now laughable introduction I shared my growth during this group has been amazing. It has been amazing for several reasons to start the book and the lectures covered a lot of important information necessary for leading or co-leading a group. Although counseling in a group setting is very different from one on one therapy the theories governing the counselor’s approach is the same. I now realize theories are more that theorpuit approaches and techniques it is more of an individual’s worldview and learning to become a change agent. If one desires to be a change agent it is virtually impossible to do so without first changing or broadening the way one looks at world.

In order to understand how this method can be used in this study, then it first must be explained. According to the text, Making Sense of the Social World, focus groups are considered as, “a qualitative method that involves unstructured group interviews in which the focus group leader actively encourages discussion among participants on the topics of interest” (Chambliss & Schutt, 2016, p. 220). Often times young adults are more open when around others of their own age, this is the main reason I selected this method because an at-risk youth is going to be more comfortable answering questions and sharing their opinions when around a group that shares similar characteristics or life situations compared to just a one-on-one conversation between them and a researcher or amongst strangers. However, with this method there are also strengths and weaknesses when using this method. The major strengths to focus groups are: they can save time and money compared to other methods, they provide participants the opportunity to explain their viewpoints, it allows for participants to be more open and give clarification on their personal and group perceptions, and they provide for a broad range of information and data to be collected from the sample. The disadvantages to focus groups are: they are hard to manage among a large group, there can be disagreements or unnecessary conversations among participants that might take away from the main questions being asked, and not everyone might what to participate or feel intimidated. Not only are their strengths and weaknesses, but also there is also ethical concerns because it is an open group setting compared to other methods. Therefore, the main ethical concern with focus groups is that a researcher has disclosed participants’ identities to each other, which can be a concern particularly if there are sensitive topics being discussed among one

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

There are advantages and disadvantages to using focus groups. Advantages are that focus groups can be used to collect in-depth information about delicate subject matters in the efforts to develop health services, health interventions, or to improve care. Focus groups can also encourage participants that would be silent to voice their opinions. Another advantage of focus groups leads to some “hidden” or “unexpected” information that may be very valuable and have major implications for developing health programs that are appropriate to the target population (Focus Groups, pg. 91). Disadvantages of focus groups include: 1) prevalence cannot be stated; focus groups give details about the variety of views only and 2) since focus groups use a

The three focus groups will allow people to feel empowered and express their opinions freely, and participants will be able to query one another and explain their answers amongst the group. (Neuman et al, 2012) They will be held in three different locations throughout the city and three different research team members will facilitate based on their personality traits, and a pretest will be employed prior to the sessions. (Masadeh, 2012) The focus groups will host a diverse group of individual volunteers and will be advertised throughout Toronto and in varying institutions, workplaces, and hubs to ensure this. This group will comprise six to twelve people, depending on the response rate. Focus groups can have limitations such as: the possibility if groupthink, existing polarization effects, the effects of the moderator, time consuming and few topics can be

I will need to collect some follow up data and the data provided from the focus group should solidify most of my findings. I would also like to see if all focus group members have the same respect for books and reading or if I can pick up that this is only a job/paycheck for them. I just finished the process of transcribing