Best Practices for Synchronous Online Focus Groups

Qualitative Data Collection in an Era of Social Distancing

“…For online focus groups, it is also important to realize that even though the programs usually allow for a large number of people to be included in a single session, videoconferencing works best with a relatively small number of participants. If face-to-face focus groups usually work well with anywhere between 4 and 10 participants, online focus groups call for a lower number, ideally 3-5 (Lobe, 2017;Morgan & Lobe, 2011). In addition, focus group interviews with a larger number of participants are particularly difficult to conduct on mobile devices with small screens because it becomes difficult to see to the windows with the other participants.…”

“…Because of its wide usage, it was frequently picked up by qualitative researchers before other videoconferencing tools picked up (Cater, 2011;Deakin & Wakefield, 2014;Lo Iacono et al, 2016;Sullivan, 2012). Because it is so widely used in interpersonal communication, it is often the first application that comes to mind when people think about taking qualitative interviewing and focus groups online (Lobe, 2017). Although one can download it to a computer or use it in a web browser, Skype is sensitive to internet connectivity quality issues (Lobe, 2017) and therefore works best via the downloadable rather than the browser-based version.…”

“…The most common way to replace the traditional statement of informed consent for online data collection is to email the consent form to the participant, typically in the body of an email, and request that the participant reply to that message as an expression of consent (Lobe, 2017). For some situations, electronic signatures may be provided (Hewson et al, 2016) by inserting scanned signatures to a Word document or by using specialized programs such as using Docusign.…”

“…Privacy issues are inherent to online services (Lobe, 2017) as in the famous saying: "Once online, always online!" So, it is essential to investigate the privacy, confidentiality, and data collection policies of all platforms and services.…”

Design Considerations for Live Video Survey Interviews

“…Far more methodological research will be needed to verify when and how video survey interviewing is viable for which populations, and which features have which effects (see, e.g., Feuer andSchober 2015, 2019;Sun and Conrad 2019). It will be important to evaluate when and how findings and advice from qualitative video interviewing research, for example on participant recruitment and data quality (e.g., Forrestal, D'Angelo, and Vogel 2015;Janghorban, Roudsari, and Taghipour 2014;Lobe 2017), apply to structured interviews to collect quantitative data, particularly as video and communication technology use have so radically changed. We see attending to the design considerations e.g., https://electionstudies.org/announcement-to-the-american-national-election-studies-anes-user-community and https://the-sra.org.uk/ common/Uploaded files/Research Matters Magazine/sra-research-matters-june-2020-edition.pdf listed here-and documenting the effects of different design choices-as complementing evolving guidance on the use of live video in other domains of research (e.g., Marhefka, Lockhart, and Turner 2020) and as critical to discovering which implementations of video interviewing lead to the best data quality, cost effectiveness, and the best respondent experience.…”