The Pitfalls and Promise of Focus Groups as a Data Collection Method

Abstract

Despite their long trajectory in the social sciences, few systematic works analyze how often and for what purposes focus groups appear in published works. This study fills this gap by undertaking a meta-analysis of focus group use over the last ten years. It makes several contributions to our understanding of when and why focus groups are used in the social sciences. First, the study explains that focus groups generate data at three units of analysis: the individual, the group, and the interaction. While most researchers rely upon the individual unit of analysis, the method's comparative advantage lies in the group and interactive units. Second, it reveals strong affinities between each unit of analysis and the primary motivation for using focus groups as a data collection method. The individual unit of analysis is appropriate for triangulation; the group unit is appropriate as a pretest; and the interactive unit is appropriate for exploration. Finally, it offers a set of guidelines that researchers should adopt when presenting focus groups as part of their research design. Researchers should, first, state the main purpose of the focus group in a research design; second, identify the primary unit of analysis exploited; and finally, list the questions used to collect data in the focus group. When, where, and how are they used? Focus groups were introduced to the social sciences in the early 1940s and have since grown in popularity (Liamputtong 2011:9).They are useful for studying socially marginalized groups (Madriz 1998; Liamputtong 2011), understanding community dynamics (Lloyd-Evans 2006), and eliciting feedback on sensitive issues (Madriz 2003). Despite their long trajectory and specific applications in the social sciences, we know very little about the general frequency of focus group use and the methodological ends that these help to meet. In the 1990s, a host of articles and books addressed how to undertake focus groups (Stewart and Shamdasani 1990; Morgan 1993, Krueger andCasey 1994). Few works, however, have analyzed how focus groups are currently used in practice and how often and for what purposes the data collection method appears in published works. 1This dearth in the literature has come with great costs. First, until we understand how and when social scientists currently use focus groups, we cannot properly assess the advantages that these provide for high-level social science research. Scholars are increasingly motivated to build bridges between different methodologies in their research. One way to do this is to specify the unique added value that each method provides (Munck 2007:56-7). Theoretically, focus groups may simultaneously produce data at the individual, group, and interactive levels (Kidd and Parshall 2000). A principle contribution of this piece is to stipulate how each unit of data is used in practice. I demonstrate that each unit can serve distinct research purposes and is motivated by different objectives. The individual unit of analysis is appropriate for triangulating ...

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