Focus Groups

Applying Communication Theory through Design, Facilitation, and Analysis

Christine S. Davis

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781315298474
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Negocios y empresa
• Subtopic: Publicidad

Despite the fact that focus groups are an ideal research tool for studying and employing group communication in action, many research practitioners and scholars have missed the opportunity to utilize them to their maximum benefit. Few researchers have the skills that enable them to approach focus group facilitation and analysis from a communication point of view. In this book, Dr. Christine Davis teaches readers how to take a project from an idea to the design, facilitation, and analysis stages. This book takes a unique communication perspective to apply group communication theories, knowledge of group processes, and a close discourse analysis approach to explain and understand the discursive aspect of focus groups. This book helps readers of all stages of experience - including those with no background in focus group research to those practitioners with more focus group expertise - understand how a communication approach to focus groups takes advantage of this discipline's rich scholarship in group communication and discourse analysis.

This book will teach readers how to

a. understand the nature of focus group research procedures from a communication point of view;

b. understand how to translate RQs into a focus group protocol;

c. use knowledge of communication theory and group process to understand how to facilitate different kinds of focus groups, prevent and overcome challenges in focus group facilitation; and elicit different outcomes and techniques when facilitating a focus group;

d. use knowledge of communication theory and group process to recognize the merits of different approaches to focus group facilitation;

e. use knowledge of communication theory and group process to recognize good- and poor-quality focus groups;

f. understand how to transcribe / code / analyze focus group data from a communication (discursive) perspective; and

g. understand how to write focus group findings.

1

FOCUS GROUP HISTORY AND PRACTICE

Focus Groups Defined

Simply put, focus groups are group discussions focused on a specific situation or topic (Stewart et al., 2007). Focus groups allow researchers to view how people communicate about or interact with different facets of life in a group setting (Smithson, 2000). Group interviewing as a method has been used since the mid-1920s, but its use is generally attributable to Robert Merton, who originally called the method ‘focused interviews.’ Merton himself gives credit to Paul Lazarsfeld, known as the ‘father’ of market research, who used variations of the method to test media messages for the Office of War Information in the 1940s (Merton, 1987; Morgan, 1996; Stewart et al., 2007). Clarification must be made between focus groups and other types of group interviews. Unlike individual interviews, the individual is not the main focus of focus groups; it is the group itself that provides the data, and this is an important distinction (Linhorst, 2002; Smithson, 2000). The earliest focus groups, by the way, were held in people’s homes. Today many are held in formal focus group labs equipped with microphones, one-way mirrors, cameras, and hidden viewing rooms (Stewart et al., 2007).

By definition, focus groups involve small groups, anywhere from four to twelve people, who come together for an in-depth conversation on a specific topic. In my personal experience, five to eight attendees is the ideal number of participants—large enough to have a robust conversation, but small enough to maximize interaction and involvement among all attendees.

Focus groups are traditionally held face-to-face, but today, focus groups are frequently also conducted via telephone, Skype, and other electronic means. They are a qualitative method of collecting data, which means the findings are not appropriately counted or statistically manipulated. The data derived from focus groups consists primarily of verbal and nonverbal communication. Focus groups can be used in many different types of research projects; they are frequently used as one of multiple qualitative methods of data collection in ethnographic or grounded theory research—typically used in conjunction with observations, in-depth interviews, artifact analysis, case reviews, document reviews, and/or expert panels. They can also be used as part of a mixed method approach in a more quantitatively oriented project—often in conjunction with surveys, for example.

Characteristics of Focus Groups

Focus groups can be conducted with groups of people who are strangers to one another, or they can consist of groups of people who know each other, called natural groups or bona fide groups (Frey, 1994; Putnam & Stohl, 1990). Participants might consist of people who have little in common—heterogeneous groups—or of people who have a great deal in common, homogeneous groups. Sometimes homogeneous groups ‘gel’ more easily; however, they are not always necessarily better. It may be advantageous to watch people disagree with one another and have to explain themselves in the group setting. A focus group can be a one-time occurrence or part of a study in which the group meets regularly over time.

Focus groups are led by a facilitator or moderator, and facilitation can be structured or loosely open-ended. Typically, facilitation includes the use of a moderator’s guide, which looks very much like an outline of topics to be covered. Facilitators use in-depth and open-ended questioning techniques borrowed from fields such as communication studies, psychology, and anthropology. For example, practices like nondirective interviewing, loosely structured questions, projective techniques, indirect approaches to asking questions, and nonverbal questioning modes such as visualization or role-playing can facilitate rich interactive discussion, which is one of the key goals of a focus group discussion. The quality of a focus group relies heavily on the skills of the moderator (Morgan, 1996). In addition to facilitation skills—which are much more difficult than they look—other factors that affect the group dynamics include the group composition, setting, and moderator rapport with the group members. This is why facilitation really begins when the study is in the design phase.

The point of deep focus group discussion is to gain immersion into people’s lives. In that sense, focus groups hold the unique position of approximating an understanding of communication in vivo, but in a laboratory setting. Qualitative researchers identify two types of data: emic (data that is naturalistic, indigenous to a specific site or real-world instance) and etic (researcher imposed, such as in a laboratory setting) (Krippendorf, 2004). Focus groups bridge both types of data—they are naturalistic because they involve naturally occurring communication practices and social interactions but, as I said, in a laboratory setting. Focus groups could be said to be a socially organized situation, viewed as a performance where participants communicate about a shared assumption through proposed topics as well as natural discussion (Smithson, 2000). Thus, focus groups have the distinctive characteristic of being able to provide retrospective and meta-communication about a communication phenomenon in the past as participants share their stories about themselves in the larger social context, and at the same time observation of group discourse as it is naturally occurring in the specific focus group communication (Wilkinson, 1998). In fact, focus groups are the only method that allows interaction to be studied in such a manner (Morgan, 1996). In addition, focus groups provide both theoretical and pragmatic insights through participants’ discussion of their thought processes (Freeman, 2006).

Uses for Focus Groups

The appropriate reasons to use focus groups as a method are to listen to people talk in a group, listen for group-generated language, listen to people bouncing ideas off of one another, or to listen to how people influence each other. The best known use of focus groups is for marketing, advertising, or consumer research; to determine consumer needs; or to pre-test advertising concepts. There are an infinite number of other uses, however. Employee focus groups are common, as are political focus groups. Focus groups for academic research are frequently conducted in the fields of communication studies, education, political science, public health, business, sociology, aging, and criminology, among many others (Morgan, 1996). Every decision made in designing a research study stems from the study purpose, objective, or research question. Focus groups tend to be used for exploratory or phenomenological (to understand ‘lived experience’) research, and an ideal reason to use focus groups rather than individual interviews is to better understand group dynamics around a topic. Focus groups can help the researcher (and clients) understand an experience from the point of view of the participant (or consumer) (Lehoux et al., 2006; Puchta & Potter, 1999). Focus groups can provide researchers information about exploratory topics, and they often work well for preliminary research or at the early stages of research (Smithson, 2000). Focus groups are widely used to gain information from populations including, but not limited to, children and adolescents, ethnic and racial minorities, people with low income, and other special populations (Linhorst, 2002). Focus groups are also best used when little is known about a topic, when you want to have in-depth understanding of a phenomenon, when you want an explanation of quantitative findings, for brainstorming for ideas or solutions, or to aid in designing or piloting further research. Focus groups can be useful in development of a quantitative project by assisting in designing measurement tools and providing other background or cultural information (Linhorst, 2002).

In my years as a market research consultant, I conducted focus groups for many different uses. One type of study we frequently conducted was a needs assessment, to help companies understand the needs and motivations of their consumers. We also conducted a great deal of advertising development and testing and, related to that, message crafting. I’ve done focus group research for consumer segmentation, to divide the consumers into different sub-groups depending on characteristics such as personality, need, attitudes, or demographics; for exploratory research, to understand how purchasing decisions are made; for product idea generation, product modifications, marketing strategies, product line extensions, or service improvements; and for product testing. Other study objectives appropriately answered with focus groups include image testing; package or product usage testing; new product acceptance testing; and general image and user attitudes, purchase motivations, and brand loyalty. Focus groups are suitable to understand values associated with product use, hear a consumer’s own language about a product or category, assess reactions to new products or services, and to obtain ideas for language, visuals, or imagery to use in communication efforts.

In conducting scholarly or academic research, I’ve frequently used focus groups as a method for member checking—asking participants in ethnographic research to review and comment on my study findings; for exploration or discovery; to understand perception, motivation, or experience; and for metacommunication in a group. In one ethnographic study, I asked participants in an interdisciplinary health team I was studying to comment on their group behavior and communication. More uses relative to academic research include theory development and phenomenological understanding—to understand someone’s lived experience. Both consumer and scholarly research might use focus groups to understand how an event was experienced—from the point of view of the person in the experience; to build or generate hypotheses; to understand how a group interacts or communicates; and to understand how people influence one another through language or conversation.

Finally, focus groups are often combined with other methods, frequently with in-depth, individual qualitative interviews or quantitative surveys (Morgan, 1996), to provide preliminary exploratory information prior to a quantitative study or to provide explanatory and interpretive information after quantitative data collection.

Advantages and Disadvantages to Focus Groups

The focus group method is particularly suited to feminist and critical criteria of giving voice to marginalized people and sharing power with the people being researched (Wilkinson, 1998). In focus group research, in many ways the relationship between the person being researched and the person doing the researching is less hierarchical than in other methods—the balance of power shifts from the researcher to the participants, giving participants more confidence to weigh in with opinions and comments. Therefore, this method provides opportunities for participants to interactively exchange views in a relatively free-flowing process. In this way, the researcher is better able to understand a phenomenon from the point of view of the participants because the researcher has less power to influence the participants with his/her views (Wilkinson, 1999). Participants are able to bring up topics that the researcher may not have included, therefore enriching data collected (Wilkinson, 1998), and provide a way in which to give voice to marginalized groups (Morgan, 1996). As a feminist-type methodology, focus groups are useful in providing information on social context and how meanings and knowledge construct meanings through interaction (Wilkinson, 1998).

Focus groups as a method also have other strengths and limitations. The balance of power can be seen as an advantage or a disadvantage, depending on how it plays out in the actual group, since the facilitator has less control over the group process than some might find comfortable. Relatedly, the interactional character of the discussion is both a positive and a negative (Webb & Kevern, 2001). Focus groups yield more fruitful information from their collective nature than do individual interviews (Morgan, 1996), and an advantage to using focus groups is not only the interaction but also the reaction that happens when participants share something that others either agree or disagree on. This sparks new questions that participants ask themselves, unprompted by the researcher (Wilkinson, 1998). Thus, focus groups provide valuable insight into the messiness of everyday life. Focus groups allow the researcher to specifically ask about experiences and views, therefore allowing participants to answer not only the questions they are asked by the researcher but also questions brought up by other participants. Therefore, focus groups are valuable because of their ability to tap into everyday experiences with friends, family, colleagues, and others. They allow researchers to gain interaction data like arguing, joking, teasing, persuasion, challenge, and disagreement. Focus groups allow interaction to occur in a manner similarly to how interactions take place in everyday social processes, therefore mirroring everyday situations (Wilkinson, 1999). Focus groups are an ideal way to see group interaction in action, but the interaction itself results in potential misinterpretation of the findings. For that reason, focus group conversations should be analyzed in their entirety, as comments made by participants have meaning only in the interactional context in which they were made.

The interaction can be a challenge for the facilitator to control (Morgan, 1996). Moderator control is a fine line, as I’ll talk about in this book—too much control and you interrupt the interaction; too little and the session is no longer ‘focused.’ The interaction itself can potentially encourage reluctant participants to talk but it can also stifle dissenting opinion. In fact, the interactional nature of the group discussion likely influences participants’ opinions to some extent (Hollander, 2004; Morgan, 1996), and this manufactured and constructed social space structures the interactions and discussions (Lehoux et al., 2006). Some ideas formed within focus groups are based on the opinions shared by other participants, and the impact of interactions on the processes and outcomes of focus groups can affirm participants’ views and roles and allow participants to validate or challenge one another’s claims (Lehoux et al., 2006; Webb & Kevern, 2001). However, as focus groups are often used for sensitive research topics, there is the downside potential of leaving participants to feel powerless or disadvantaged in regard to the subject being discussed, potentially opening them up to vulnerability (Owen, 2001). Power dynamics play out in focus groups, sometimes hindering some participants from contributing and potentially encouraging others to fabricate stories (Lehoux et al., 2006). Another disadvantage to focus groups is that participants may not only disagree with one another but also may misunderstand one another or the facilitator. Other challenges to focus group facilitation include establishing researcher credibility; making sure all participants participate equally; managing emotional issues such as anger, depression, and so on; and sensitively managing people with mental illness or disability (Linhorst, 2002).

Because of their very nature as a qualitative method that is built on participant interaction, focus groups are inherently biased due to that interaction. Focus groups let you see that bias as it is being constructed, which is a key reason to use the method, but because of that, focus group research is absolutely not representative of a population at large, and it is not generalizable or quantifiable. Simply put, focus group data are qualitative, and attempting to produce measurable results is wrong. Counting conversational turns, for example, is an inappropriate method of analysis and is one of my personal pet peeves for the most unsuitable use of this method. For focus group research, the emphasis is on shared construction of meaning rather than measurement.

Summary

Focus groups are small group conversations involving from 4 to 12 people who are focused on discussing a specific situation or topic. In focus groups, distinct from related methods such as in-depth interviews or group interviews, the emphasis of both data collection and analysis is appropriately concentrated on the interactional aspects of the discussion. Facilitators use in-depth and open-ended questioning techniques to elicit rich interactive discussions. Focus groups hold the unique characteristic of being both naturalistic—because they involve naturally occurring communication practices and social interactions—and researcher imposed. Focus groups are frequently used in consumer or marketing research and by scholars in social science disciplines. Researchers most appropriately use focus groups for preliminary, exploratory, or phenomenological purposes, and an ideal reason to use focus groups rather than individual interviews is to better understand group dynamics around a topic. Frequently used in conjunction with other methods, focus groups can serve as member checks in ethnographic research, or to build or generate hypotheses, provide preliminary information for a quantitative study, or provide explanatory or interpretive information after quantitative research. The method of focus groups...