Focus Groups

TLDR

Focus groups have resurged over the past decade as a widely used qualitative method across disciplines, often combined with surveys or interviews, and are compared to these methods to highlight the benefits and drawbacks of group interaction and moderator guidance. Future work should establish reporting standards, conduct further methodological studies, address data analysis challenges, and better engage participants in focus group research. Careful attention to research design at both the project and group levels can maximize the advantages of focus groups.

Abstract

Over the past decade, focus groups and group interviews have reemerged as a popular technique for gathering qualitative data, both among sociologists and across a wide range of academic and applied research areas. Focus groups are currently used as both a self-contained method and in combination with surveys and other research methods, most notably individual, in-depth interviews. Comparisons between focus groups and both surveys and individual interviews help to show the specific advantages and disadvantages of group interviews, concentrating on the role of the group in producing interaction and the role of the moderator in guiding this interaction. The advantages of focus groups can be maximized through careful attention to research design issues at both the project and the group level. Important future directions include: the development of standards for reporting focus group research, more methodological research on focus groups, more attention to data analysis issues, and more engagement with the concerns of the research participants.