Stuart Cunningham

カニンハム スチュアート

カニンハム, スチュアート

44988

Cunningham, Stuart

44989

Kwansei Gakuin University Repository

Using Focus Groups for Qualitative ResearchStuart CUNNINGHAM*There is a considerable body of literature on focus groups, stretching back to1926; however, this literature is almost entirely devoted to the use of focus groupsin marketing, with some uses of focus groups in sociology and recently in healthcare research. There still remains very little use of focus groups in appliedlinguistics research to date. However the focus group as a means of investigating theopinions people hold on specified issues has been a tried and tested method withinthe field of sales and marketing. This method of gathering information is alsotransferable to applied linguistics. Yet, such transference requires care, for the mainfeature of the sales and marketing approach to the utilization of focus groups is tofocus on the opinions given. Such an approach has many pitfalls for researchers inapplied linguistics. Instead, this paper will outline a proposal for the utilization offocus groups for the purpose of gathering data for a discursive analysis, in whichthe process of how opinions are formed is of more interest than the actual opinionsthemselves.What exactly is a focus group?The term “Focus Group” consists of four defining criteria (Krueger and Casey.2009); the number of participants, the characteristics of the participants, the natureof the data collected, and the nature of the discussion. The number of participants isusually seen as between 4 and 12. Fewer than four is seen as weakening the keystrength of the group, the interaction between group members. More than twelvewill likely lead to a number of smaller groups forming within the main group. Thecharacteristics of the participants depends on the nature of the topic under research;e.g. research into opinions of people in their thirties, research into the opinions ofpeople who have young children. The nature of the data collected is qualitative,although an exploratory focus group (see Calder, 1977 for a full discussion on??????????????????????????????????????????* Instructor of English, Kwansei Gakuin UniversityKwansei Gakuin UniversityHumanities ReviewVol. 17, 2012Nishinomiya, Japan???different applications of focus groups) can be used as a precursor to a quantitativestudy it should not be used as a quantitative study itself. The nature of thediscussion itself is possibly the single most important defining characteristic of afocus group and this is best explained by highlighting a well-known abuse of focusgroups. The focus group as a research tool works primarily because of theinteraction between the participants. A moderator should be careful not to ask thesame question to each participant in turn, following a blatant sequence, onlypermitting the participants to interact with the moderator and without allowing theparticipants to interact with each other. This would be individual interviewsconducted en masse and, as such would not represent focus group research. Asecond important feature, which will be taken up in more detail below, is the natureof the questioning route. The question route must be focused. Indeed, originallyMerton would refer not to focus groups but to ‘focussed interviews’ (see Merton1987, in which he also bemoans the “unwarrantable” change of spelling fromfocussed to focused, with the dropping of the second ‘s’). A functional summary ofthe above information will serve as a definition of what the term ‘focus group’ willrefer to in this paper. A focus group is a tool for gathering qualitative data by usinga group of 4−12 people who share some common relationship to the topic ofresearch and who interact with one another, as well as the moderator, in a focuseddiscussion.Considerations for using focus groups as a method of gathering data forqualitative analysis can be divided into three categories; planning considerations,moderating considerations, and finally, analytical considerations.PlanningPlanning considerations are primarily related to the selection of the participants,the construction of the question route, the selection of the location and the methodof recording the data. The first consideration in selecting participants is one ofsampling. Sampling for focus groups should be “purposive sampling”, i.e. randomsampling should be avoided in favour of sampling people who have particular traitsidentified as important by the researcher. In any case, focus groups are too small insize to truly offer any general representativeness of a desired larger population(using the technique of segmentation may go some way to achieving this but thisapproach to sampling participants is only of interest when the focus is on theproduct of the focus group and not how that product is produced). In effect, thisrepresents selection rather than sampling, however a larger-than-needed list ofpurposively sampled participants could be drawn up and then random samplingcould take place from this list, however, the purpose for doing so is to remove anyStuart CUNNINGHAM???potential bias on the part of the researcher. If the researcher is also the moderator ofthe focus group then this bias (within this approach) does not constitute a researchflaw because the interaction between participants (including the moderator) is whatis going to be analyzed (the role of the moderator is discussed below). Anotherconsideration is the extent to which the participants know one another. Thisconsideration is based on the need for confidentiality: should the researcher feel thetopic is one in which confidentiality may be of concern then it is better to haveparticipants who are unfamiliar with one another, if, on the other hand,confidentiality issues are not foreseen to be relevant then it is not a problem to havefriends or acquaintances as the participants.When constructing the question route for a discursive analysis the traditionalmarketing approach is applicable as it is the perspective of the analysis, and not themethod of gathering data, that is different. The tried-and-tested question route (seeFigure 1) is designed primarily for gathering information on participants’ attitudestowards a product or service.This technique affords primacy to the information given during the key questionstage. However, with a discursive analysis, it is less important to focus on theinformation discussed at the key question stage. Yet, this questioning route serves asa useful plan for keeping the process focused (with one “s”) on the topic. Usingopen-ended interview questions can become unfocused and so a well-planned routewill only be of benefit to the moderator.The final two considerations in the planning stage are finding a location andrecording the data. These two considerations potentially overlap, and so are dealtwith simultaneously. The location needs to be somewhere that allows theFigure 1 The Questioning Route (based on Krueger and Casey. 2009)Route segment Question Style PurposeOpening Quick, easy to answer To get everyone to talk early on in thediscussionIntroductory Open-ended, often requesting pastexperiences related to the topicTo encourage interaction amongst theparticipantsTransition More in-depth versions of the introductorystageTo move towards the key questionsKey Questions Reflective To give the analyst the necessary informationor the analysisEnding Questions The “all things considered” question.The summary question.A feedback question.To allow participants to clarify any pointsmade. To allow participants to add importantinformation that they were not able to inprevious stages.Using Focus Groups for Qualitative Research ???participants to feel at ease and yet the need to get quality audio-visual recordingsexcludes certain locations that may permit the participants to feel at ease but may betoo noisy. Furthermore, ideally it will be possible to collect video data frommultiple perspectives and again this consideration needs to be taken into account.ModeratingIn terms of moderating skills, there are a few things of which the moderatorneeds to be aware. Firstly, a lot of the marketing-based texts on focus groupssuggest that certain mannerisms are relatively neutral in how the participants willrespond to them. Krueger and Casey (2009) suggest trying “to restrict headnodding”. This is in contrast to a discursive approach, which recognizes “thepowerful influence that interviewer responses can have on the development ofsubsequent talk” (Richards. 2011). For the moderator this means that any responseintended as a minimal response or neutral responses may in fact produce anoutcome in the subsequent talk that was not the intention behind the utterance.Indeed, Richards (2011) points out that interviewees come to expect certain responsetypes from the interviewer and changes in interviewer style during the interviewmay also affect subsequent talk. It is worth reiterating the point that with adiscursive approach to the analysis of the data any such consequences do notrepresent a failing, they merely present themselves as something that may be worthyof analysis.Strongly related to this point is the question of the extent to which themoderator should become involved in the interview. Any approach which believesthat it should focus on obtaining an accurate portrayal of the truthful nature of theissue under investigation will need a moderator who attempts to control theinvolvement of the participants, encouraging participation from some whilst limitingparticipation from others. The discursive approach to the data analysis need not beso concerned with such matters as it is attending to how the talk is constructed.Therefore the moderator need not attempt to be an almost unobservable presence inthe interview.A final consideration for the moderator is related to incorrect or harmful adviceon the part of one or more interviewees. Casey and Krueger (2009) cite an examplefrom one of their focus groups:You know, it is not really important to use gloves, a mask and all that stuffwhen you mix pesticides. My dad has been doing it for years and it hasn’t hurthim a bit.Casey and Krueger. 2009: 102.Stuart CUNNINGHAM???The moderator cannot ignore the obviously harmful nature of this advice, but it is adifficult problem. When does the moderator attend to this? This should be done atthe end of the interview when the moderator should review the harmful advice andthen correct it, and offer the correction as a fact and not as an opinion, and offer tosend information on this fact to the participants (Casey and Krueger. 2009).The AnalysisThe analysis of the data from a discursive perspective utilizes the approach thatis Conversation Analysis (CA). CA is a rigorous method for analyzing spokeninteraction. The analysis is based on the first-order entextualization (Haberland.2012), or the audio-video recordings of the conversation. However, second-orderentextualization, the transcript of the data, is often how the data is transmitted inpaper-based publications. Whilst it is far beyond the scope of this paper to explainCA methodology, it is useful to look at some of the basic assumptions of CA and toshow why these assumptions make CA such a good fit for the analysis of focusgroup generated data.Psathas (1995) identifies seven underlying assumptions of CA.1. Order is a produced orderliness.2. Order is produced by the parties in situ; that is, it is situated and occasioned.3. The parties orient to that order themselves; this order is not an analyst’sconception [.]4. Order is repeatable and recurrent.5. The discovery, description, and analysis of that produced orderliness is thetask of the researcher.6. Issues of how frequently, how widely, or how often particular phenomenaoccur are to be set aside in the interest of discovering, describing, andanalyzing the structures, the machinery, the organized practices, the formalprocedures, the ways in which order is produced.7. Structures of social action, once so discerned, can be described and analyzedin formal, that is, structural, organizational, logical, atopically contentless,consistent, and abstract, terms.Psathas. 1995: 2.The above seven points highlight the nature of the good fit CA has with focusgroups. The orderliness of the interview will be observable. The analyst focuses onthe parties’ orientation to the orderliness and, therefore, the interaction of theparticipants becomes central and not the content of the interaction. In effect, theUsing Focus Groups for Qualitative Research ???interaction of the participants should not be viewed as the medium through which acareful analyst can discern truth; rather, the interaction is precisely what is beinganalyzed.The analysis itself starts with the ‘unmotivated looking’ (see Schegloff, 1996for a thorough explanation of this central concept in CA) at the audio-visual data.The researcher can focus on either sequential organization in interaction or onMembership Categorization Devices (MCDs). Perhaps the four most common typesof interactional organization are:1. Turn-taking organization.2. Sequence organization.3. Repair organization.4. The organization of turn-design.Ten Have. 1999: 128−137.MCDs are made of two parts, collections of categories, and rules of application (seeSchegloff 2007, for a tutorial on MCDs). A careful and repeated looking at the datawill slowly uncover interactional phenomena for investigation.The findings of the analysis will, of course, have limitations. The fact thatindividuals in a unique situation produce the topic means it would be unwise tomake claims as to the universality of the findings. Instead, the concept oftransferability seems more appropriate. Transferability is a parallel concept togeneralizability, for it is the reader who decides on the applicability of the resultsand not the writer. The reader makes this decision by reviewing the situations,conditions, and procedures used in the initial research. This is why it would beimportant to clearly lay out as much detail as possible when writing up anyresearch, for the relevance of the information can be decided, not by the writer, butby the reader.ConclusionThis paper has sought to define what focus groups are and how they are usefulmethods for collecting data. The focused nature of the interview process is used toprovoke conversation but not to gather an essentialist insight into the topic for thismethod, the discursive analysis, concerns itself with the way participants interactand how that interaction produces orderliness; factual insights are of no interest.This paper has avoided any attempt to give an introduction to CA but has insteadattempted to show the core assumptions upon which CA is based and how they areStuart CUNNINGHAM???a good fit for an analysis of focus groups. Whilst the main factors of the marketingapplication of qualitative focus groups are perfectly transferable to appliedlinguistics qualitative work at the planning stage, the methods of analysis inmarketing do not transfer quite as smoothly to qualitative analysis in appliedlinguistics, obviously due to divergent aims. Finally, the issue of generalizability offindings should be replaced with the concept of transferability.ReferencesCalder. B. J. (1977). Focus groups and the nature of qualitative marketing research. Journal ofMarketing Research 14: 353−364.Casey and Krueger. (2009). Focus groups: A practical guide for applied research. ThousandOaks, California: Sage Publications.Haberland, H. (2012). The politics of transcription: Issues of multilingual and other non-standard data. Papers from Kansai University International Symposium on Challenges andNew Directions in the Micro-analysis of Social Interaction. 1: 3−8.Merton, R. (1987). The focused interview and focus groups: Continuities and discontinuities.Public Opinion Quarterly 51: 550−566.Psathas, G. (1995). Conversation analysis. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications.Richards, K. (2011). Using micro-analysis in interviewer training:’continuers’ and interviewerpositioning. Applied Linguistics. 32/1: 95−112.Schegloff, E. (2007). A tutorial on membership categorization. Journal of Pragmatics 39: 462−482.Ten Have, P. (1999). Doing conversations analysis. Thousand Oaks, California: SagePublications.Using Focus Groups for Qualitative Research ???

Using Focus Groups for Qualitative Research

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Using Focus Groups for Qualitative Research

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