Focus Groups

Other definition: Focus groups are a powerful means to evaluate services or test new ideas. Basically, focus groups are interviews, but of 6-10 people at the same time in the same group. One can get a great deal of information during a focus group session.

What are focus groups?A focus group involves encouraging an invited group of participants to share their thoughts, feelings, attitudes and ideas on certain subject. Organising focus groups within an organisation can also be very useful in getting buy-in to a project from within that company.

In marketingIn the world of marketing, focus groups are seen as an important tool for acquiring feedback regarding new products, as well as various topics. In particular, focus groups allow companies wishing to develop, package, name, or test market a new product, to discuss, view, and/or test the new product before it is made available to the public. This can provide invaluable information about the potential market acceptance of the product.

In social sciences In the social sciences and urban planning, focus groups allow interviewers to study people in a more natural setting than a one-to-one interview. In combination with participant observation, they can be used for gaining access to various cultural and social groups, selecting sites to study, sampling of such sites, and raising unexpected issues for exploration. Focus groups have a high apparent validity - since the idea is easy to understand, the results are believable. Also, they are low in cost, one can get results relatively quickly, and they can increase the sample size of a report by talking with several people at once.[3]

Types of focus groups Variants of focus groups include:

Two-way focus group - one focus group watches another focus group and discusses the observed interactions and conclusion Dual moderator focus group - one moderator ensures the session progresses smoothly, while another ensures that all the topics are covered Dueling moderator focus group - two moderators deliberately take opposite sides on the issue under discussion Respondent moderator focus group - one or more of the respondents are asked to act as the moderator temporarily Client participant focus groups - one or more client representatives participate in the discussion, either covertly or overtly Mini focus groups - groups are composed of four or five members rather than 8 to 12 Teleconference focus groups - telephone network is used Online focus groups - computers connected via the internet are used Traditional focus groups can provide accurate information, and are less expensive than other forms of traditional marketing research. There can be significant costs however : if a product is to be marketed on a nationwide basis, it would be critical to gather respondents from various locales throughout the country since attitudes about a new product may vary due to geographical considerations. This would require a considerable expenditure in travel and lodging expenses. Additionally, the site of a traditional focus group may or may not be in a locale convenient to a specific client, so client representatives may have to incur travel and lodging expenses as well.

The use of focus groups has steadily evolved over time and is becoming increasingly widespread

Benefits/ Strengths of Focus Group Discussions Group discussion produces data and insights that would be less accessible without interaction found in a group setting -- listening to others’ verbalized experiences stimulates memories, ideas, and experiences in participants. This is also known as the group effect where group members engage in “a kind of ‘chaining’ or ‘cascading’ effect; talk links to, or tumbles out of, the topics and expressions preceding it” (Lindlof & Taylor, 2002, p. 182) [4] Group members discover a common language to describe similar experiences. This enables the capture of a form of “native language” or “vernacular speech” to understand the situation Focus groups also provide an opportunity for disclosure among similar others in a setting where participants are validated. For example, in the context of workplace bullying, targeted employees often find themselves in situations where they experience lack of voice and feelings of isolation. Use of focus groups to study workplace bullying therefore serve as both an efficacious and ethical venue for collecting data (see, e.g., Tracy, Lutgen-Sandvik, & Alberts, 2006) [5]

Problems and criticism However, focus groups also have disadvantages: The researcher has less control over a group than a one-on-one interview, and thus time can be lost on issues irrelevant to the topic; the data are tough to analyze because the talking is in reaction to the comments of other group members; observers/ moderators need to be highly trained, and groups are quite variable and can be tough to get together. (Ibid.) Moreover, the number of members of a focus group is not large enough to be a representative sample of a population; thus, the data obtained from the groups is not necessarily representative of the whole population, unlike in opinion polls.

A fundamental difficulty with focus groups (and other forms of qualitative research) is the issue of observer dependency: the results obtained are influenced by the researcher, raising questions of validity. The issue evokes associations with Heisenberg’s famous Uncertainty Principle. As Heisenberg said, "What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning." Indeed, the design of the focus group study (e.g. respondent selection, the questions asked, how they are phrased, how they are posed, in what setting, by whom, and so on) affects the answers obtained from respondents. In focus groups, researchers are not detached observers but always participants. Researchers must take this into account when making their analysis (Based on: Tjaco H. Walvis (2003), “Avoiding advertising research disaster: Advertising and the uncertainty principle”, Journal of Brand Management, Vol. 10, No. 6, pp. 403-409).