Back
to materials pageGeneral remarks. The advice given here is based on
advice we have received from departmental colleagues (in particular David
Barton, Greg Myers and Jay Banerjee), reading the items listed in the references
list at the bottom of this page and discussions with various MA students
who helped Mick in his pilot investigation.
Most of the things we have said already on the Interviews
page about how to set up interviews, structure discussions, ask questions
and so on are relevant here too. We won't repeat the information again here,
but suggest you consult that page if you have not already done so. Here,
we will concentrate on extra matters, specific to focus groups.
Relation between focus groups and interviewees. It is probably not a good idea to use students in both an interview and a focus group discussion. If you investigate them too much they will become resistant. Try to get an overall plan so that every student is involved in at least one interview or focus group discussion, but no-one is involved in two or more such activities. Using as wide a variety of students as possible will increase the reliability of your findings.
Focus group size. To get enough discussion going in a focus group you need 6 or more participants, and probably no more than 10. Given the lackadaisical quality of some students, it is probably a good idea to invite a few more than you need, so that you still have enough to make the discussion work even though some students do not turn up.
Lead time. Because more than one student is involved, you will need to leave enough time to arrange the focus group meeting (time and place) successfully.
Focus group set-up. Because you will have a number of different people speaking, a good microphone is essential, and it needs to be placed reasonably centrally, so that everyone's voices get picked up. Seating the students around a low table (to help them relax) and putting the microphone in the middle of the table works quite well. We have also found that it is a good idea to have a flip chart present, on which you to write down the various points hey make, so that they can look back over what they have said. So you need to be standing next to the flip chart, outside the student group and where they an easily see what you write. The flip chart acts as an aide memoire, and can jog their memories about other things about the course they want to raise.
Identification. At the beginning of the focus group we suggest that you go round the group, asking each student in turn to identify themselves by their private nickname and then say a couple of other sentences about something or other. This will help you to correlate voices and nicknames when you transcribe the tape.
Settling them down. You need to achieve as soon as you can an atmosphere where the students talk in a group conversation style, debating views and so on. So you need to invent an exercise they do co-operatively in the first few minutes, to settle them down into this mode. We have found that a good topic to start students off is to ask them to give advice to next year's students about how to get the best out of the course they are studying with you. This generates ideas and discussion pretty fast, and makes it easy to lead them on to the other areas you want them to talk about. But you may have better ideas. In which case, let the rest of us know about them please!
Structure and prompts/questions. What we have said on the interviews page is very relevant here. We provide, as we did for the interviews, examples of the sorts of structure and prompts we used. Feel free to adapt them to your own particular circumstances. Prompts/Questions.
There are large numbers of books and articles about qualitative research methods, including conducting focus groups. We have found the following useful:
Bloor, M. et al. (2001) 'Preparation and conduct'. In M. Bloor at al., Focus Groups in Social Research, London: Sage, Ch. 3, pp. 37-57.
Krueger, R. A. (1998) 'Categories of questions'. In R. A. Krueger, Developing Questions for Focus Groups (Focus Group Kit Volume 3), London: Sage, Ch. 4, pp. 21-51.
Morgan, D. L. (1998) 'Deciding on the degree of structure?'. In D. L. Morgan, Planning Focus Groups (Focus Group Kit Volume 2) London: Sage, Ch. 5, pp. 43-53.
Morgan, D. L. (1998) 'Setting up the sessions'. In D. L. Morgan, Planning Focus Groups (Focus Group Kit Volume 2) London: Sage, Ch. 10, pp. 121-9.
Morgan, D. L. (1998) 'Checklist for planning focus groups'. In D. L. Morgan, Planning Focus Groups (Focus Group Kit Volume 2) London: Sage, Ch. 11, pp. 131-2.
Morgan, D. L. (1998) 'What do you get from focus groups?' In D. L. Morgan, The Focus Group Guidebook (Focus Group Kit Volume 1), London: Sage, Ch. 7, pp. 55-63.
Myers, G and Macnaghten, P. (forthcoming) 'Focus groups: The moderator's and the analysts's view'. In G. Gobo, J. Gubrium, C. Seale and D. Silverman (eds.) Qualitative Research Practice, Sage.
Stewart, D. W. and P. N. Shamdasani (1990) 'Recruiting focus group participants and designing the interview guide'. In D. W. Stuart and P. N. Shamdasani, Focus Groups: Theory and Practice, Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage, Ch 3, pp. 51-67.
Stewart, D. W. and P. N. Shamdasani (1990) 'The focus group moderator'. In D. W. Stuart and P. N. Shamdasani, Focus Groups: Theory and Practice, Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage, Ch 4, pp. 69-85.
Stewart, D. W. and P. N. Shamdasani (1990) 'Conducting the focus group'. In D. W. Stuart and P. N. Shamdasani, Focus Groups: Theory and Practice, Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage, Ch 5, pp. 87-101.