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 10 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, namely, the
individual, the group, and the interaction. Although 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.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:arizona.edu/oai:arizona.openrepository.com:10150/615820 |
| Date | 05 February 2015 |
| Creators | Cyr, J. |
| Contributors | Univ Arizona, Sch Govt & Publ Policy, Polit Sci & Latin Amer Studies |
| Publisher | SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC |
| Source Sets | University of Arizona |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Article |
| Rights | © The Author(s) 2015 |
| Relation | http://smr.sagepub.com/cgi/doi/10.1177/0049124115570065 |
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