BY DR. Theresa A.ThorkildseN, Professor of Education and Psychology at the University of Illinois Chicago
Author of Plan your Focus Group and Run Your Focus Group Sage Campus courses, Theresa A. Thorkildsen shares her entry points, top tips and knowledge for running focus groups and incorporating their findings into key research projects.
Well planned focus groups serve dual purposes because investigators use them to establish scientifically valid claims and foster community engagement. This “yes and” rule encourages us to design focus groups so that community members explore important research questions and critique the research process itself. Decisions about when and how to include focus groups in a research project speak volumes about how investigators might use their research data and whether the generated ideas offer valid evidence for any research conclusions. When studying how youth learn to participate in society, I rely on three entry points each with their own purpose.
Exploratory purposes
I conduct exploratory focus groups when I want to better understand the needs and interests of a community. Exploratory focus groups help me gage community interest in my questions and introduce me to the community. I raise topics in a very general manner, listening hard to determine if the participants are curious about my research agenda. I also listen for shared vocabulary and strive to cultivate an awareness of mutual needs. I usually position myself as a community outsider in these focus groups so that participants are encouraged to elaborate on even small ideas. Especially when working with children and adolescents, this community outsider perspective requires deep thought about the trust-building process but results in richer depictions of what I want to know.
Discovery purposes
I conduct discovery focus groups when I already have strong predictions and want to see if the community where I’m working agrees or disagrees with those ideas. My predictions are usually generated using past experiences, the intentional systems theory that guides my research program, or findings from published research. I design focus group activities to test my predictions while seeking advice from the community members who participate in each conversation. Together we critique my research assumptions and community members may introduce perspectives on those assumptions that I wouldn’t have understood on my own.
Confirmatory purposes
I use confirmatory focus groups by beginning with details of statistical claims that I’ve made about data I’ve collected. My research relies heavily on aggregated data that are interpreted using a third-person perspective. This means that statistical claims about young people’s intentions may be true for the average group member, but not for specific individuals who are members of a sample. Using confirmatory questions, I invite focus groups to critique specific findings I generated via statistical analyses of individuals’ responses to research activities. We talk about whether the group norms are strong enough to be true most of the time or whether these are more subtle pressures that individuals agree or disagree with as they see fit.
For many projects, I may conduct only some of these focus group types. I am a psychologist, and that makes me aware of how group pressures may lead individuals to say things in a group that they don’t always believe to be true. Even so, I use exploratory focus groups to help a group get to know me, especially for longterm projects. I rarely use discovery focus groups because my focus is on individual contributions to a research question, but there are times when a commonsense assumption that emerges in daily research activities doesn’t feel quite right: Discovery focus groups offer a test of whether I’m on the right track before I collect and interpret costly individual data.
I often use confirmatory focus groups that include members of my targeted populations to evaluate intentional models the emerge from statistical analyses. In these, I share findings from my research and invite volunteers to offer critical feedback. Sometimes, volunteers simply describe what they see and hear and that tells me everything I need to know. Other times, I am confused about my findings and ask community members for help in understanding specific results or for advice on how to build new, stronger studies.
Well-planned focus groups often save me enormous amounts of time and ensure that I craft truthful stories about the communities in which I conduct research. Valid research findings convey the values and priorities that are dominant in targeted communities. I verify how the work I generate is likely to be understood before publishing any findings.
Plan Your Focus Group and Run Your Focus Group are two of the 25 new courses we have recently launched as part of Sage Campus Collection 2.