Onwuegbuzie, AJ

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Apollo (Cambridge)

Special Issue: Reflections & Updates on a Top-20-in-20 ArticleReflection/Commentary on a Past Article:“A Qualitative Framework for Collectingand Analyzing Data in Focus GroupResearch”http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/160940690900800301Anthony J. Onwuegbuzie1,2In 2009, my coauthors, Wendy B. Dickinson, Nancy L. Leech,and Annmarie G. Zoran (to whom I will be grateful always),and I authored an article entitled, A Qualitative Framework forCollecting and Analyzing Data in Focus Group Research,which was published in the prestigious journal, InternationalJournal of Qualitative Methods (IJQM; Onwuegbuzie, Dick-inson, Leech, & Zoran, 2009). In this article, as our title sug-gests, we provided a new qualitative framework for collectingand analyzing focus group data. Our framework had threemajor components. First, we identified the types of data thatcan be collected during the conduct of focus groups. Second,we outlined qualitative data analysis approaches that are appro-priate for analyzing these focus group data. Third, we intro-duced a focus group analysis approach that we labeled as amicro-interlocutor analysis. In a nutshell, micro-interlocutoranalysis represents the collection, analysis, and interpretationof focus group participant-based data such as which participantresponds to each question, how many participants respond toeach question, the order in which each participant responds,who responds first to each question, response characteristics,and, most importantly, the nonverbal communication used byeach participant. We contended that our framework representsa more rigorous analysis in focus group research than previousanalysis approaches because it “goes far beyond analyzing onlythe verbal communication of focus group participants”(Onwuegbuzie et al., 2009, p. 1).Our IJQM article fitted well with my career path andimpacted my work because at the time, I had changed frombeing predominantly an instructor of statistics courses andquantitative-dominant research methodology courses at theUniversity of South Carolina (1988–1994, as a graduate [i.e.,master’s and doctoral] student and postdoctoral student), Uni-versity of Central Arkansas (1994–1997; as an assistant pro-fessor), Valdosta State University (1997–2001; as an assistantprofessor), and Howard University (2001–2003; as anassociate professor)—to being predominantly an instructor ofqualitative research and mixed methods research (with theoccasional course in multivariate statistics)—at the Universityof South Florida (2003–2007; as an associate professor andprofessor) and Sam Houston State University (2007–present;as a professor). And as an instructor of qualitative research, Ifocused not only on the conceptualization and planning ofqualitative research studies but also on the implementationof qualitative research studies. It was during that period thatNancy L. Leech (University of Colorado, Denver), with whomI had begun coauthoring works in 2003 (only a few monthsafter she had earned her doctorate degree after meeting her atrandom at the 2002 American Educational Research Associa-tion conference), and who also was teaching qualitativeresearch courses, and I decided to collaborate in designing ourrespective qualitative research courses. As part of our code-sign, we identified four major sources of qualitative data: talk,documents, observation, and visual/spatial (Leech & Onwueg-buzie, 2008). At the same time, we identified and described 18qualitative data analysis approaches (Leech & Onwuegbuzie,2008; see also Leech & Onwuegbuzie, 2007) that could beused to analyze data that represent one or more of these foursources of data. And as Nancy and I increasingly immersedourselves in the area of qualitative data analysis approaches,we came to the realization that “there is very little specificinformation regarding how to analyze focus group data . . . or1 Department of Educational Leadership, Sam Houston State University,Huntsville, TX, USA2 University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South AfricaCorresponding Author:Anthony J. Onwuegbuzie, Department of Educational Leadership, Box 2119,Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, TX 77341, USA.Email: tonyonwuegbuzie@aol.comInternational Journal of Qualitative MethodsVolume 17: 1–3ª The Author(s) 2018Article reuse guidelines:sagepub.com/journals-permissionsDOI: 10.1177/1609406918788250journals.sagepub.com/home/ijqCreative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License(http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permissionprovided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).what types of analyses would be helpful with focus group data”(Onwuegbuzie et al., 2009, p. 3), which is consistent with theconclusion of Wilkinson (2004), a few years earlier, that “thereis relatively little in the focus group literature on how to ana-lyze the resulting data” (p. 182). Therefore, we set out to code-sign a framework for collecting, analyzing, and interpretingdata in focus group research, which led us to coauthor ourIJQM article. We added Wendy B. Dickinson because of herexpertise in quantitative data analysis, her status as an instruc-tor of courses in geometry and visual mathematics (statisticsand graphical display), her serving at that time as ContributingEditor for Anthropology News, her serving as a member of theAmerican Anthropology Association (Society for VisualAnthropology) and Southern Graphics Council and FloridaPrintmakers, and her being a practicing studio artist producingboth two- and three-dimensional works. Further, we addedAnnmarie G. Zoran who was a former doctoral student of mineand on whose doctoral committee I had served while beingemployed by the University of South Florida because of bothher interest in focus group research and her use of multiplefocus groups in her dissertation (consistent with my philosophyand passion of collaborating with present and past doctoralstudents).The micro-interlocutor analysis that we introduced in ourIJQM article motivated me and another doctoral student, Mag-dalena Denham, to focus more on the topic of nonverbal com-munication. And before long, we authored an article that wewere fortunate to have published in IJQM (Denham &Onwuegbuzie, 2013a). Around the same time, we were invitedto deliver a microkeynote address at the International Institutefor Qualitative Methodology’s (IIQM’s) 2013 Advances inQualitative Methods (AQM) conference in Edmonton,Alberta, Canada (Denham & Onwuegbuzie, 2013b). Also, withtwo additional doctoral students, we had the pleasure of con-ducting a workshop on focus group research at IIQM’s 13thAnnual Thinking Qualitatively Workshop Series (McAlister-Shields, Dickerson, Denham, & Onwuegbuzie, 2013), whichtook place immediately before the AQM conference at thesame location.While striving to advance the field of qualitative methods, Ialso attempted to contribute to the field of mixed methods. Tothis end, our IJQM article led Nancy and I to the realization thatour micro-interlocutor analysis represented the analysis notonly of qualitative data (e.g., verbal data) but also of quantita-tive data, such as the following:descriptive analyses (e.g., consensus counts), univariate analyses(e.g., independent samples t test comparing number of words spo-ken by male and female focus group members), multivariate anal-yses (e.g., conducting a discriminant analysis to determine whichdemographic factors predict consensus vs. dissenters acrossnumerous focus groups), analysis of group membership (e.g., usingcorrespondence analysis to analyze relationships between theemergent themes and the focus groups participants within onefocus group or across multiple focus groups; Onwuegbuzie &Hitchcock, 2015, p. 288)This led us to the conclusion that micro-interlocutor analysistransformed the analysis of focus group data from a qualitativeanalysis to a mixed methods analysis. In turn, this conclusionled us to develop a mixed methods research framework forcollecting, analyzing, and interpreting focus group data(Onwuegbuzie, Dickinson, Leech, & Zoran, 2010). And thismixed methods-based reframing of focus group researchinspired other articles in the area of focus group research. Forexample, I coauthored an article in which we developed aframework, wherein the focus group research participants serveas participant-researchers and manage the focus group researchstudy themselves—collecting, analyzing, and interpreting theirown focus group data (Onwuegbuzie & Frels, 2015). Mostnotably, our IJQM article has led to the coauthoring of a SAGEtextbook on focus group research with three of my formerdoctoral students at Sam Houston State University (Onwueg-buzie, McAllister-Shields, Dickerson, & Denham, in press).And with approximately 700 citations to date and the distinc-tion of being the 12th most-cited IJQM article at the time ofwriting, it appears that our IJQM article has impacted both thefield of qualitative research and mixed methods research.I have been pleasantly surprised how popular our IJQMarticle has been. Indeed, not only has this article been wellcited, as mentioned earlier, but, over the years, I have receivednumerous requests for permission to reproduce the two figuresand one table in this article. However, the biggest surprise that Ireceived regarding this article was a request to translate thisarticle to Spanish, which I gave after securing permission fromthe editor of IJQM (Onwuegbuzie, Leech, Dickinson, & Zoran,2011). And this Spanish version already has been cited in morethan 50 works.One big change that has occurred since our IJQM article hasbeen the significant increase of books in the area of focus groupresearch. A quick perusal led me to identify at least 20 booksrelated to focus group research in the past 9 years. However, thevast majority of these book authors frame focus group researchas exclusively or predominantly a qualitative research process.Thus, I hope that our book (i.e., Onwuegbuzie et al., in press)will begin to fill the void. Only time will tell. However, in themeantime, I would like to take this opportunity to thank BaileySousa, Director, IIQM, and Linda Liebenberg, Editor-in-Chief,IJQM, for inviting me to be a part of the IJQM Special Issuefeaturing updates on what are deemed to be the top 20 IJQMarticles over the past 20 years, in celebration of the 20th Anni-versary of IIQM. It has been a pleasant experiencing “travellingdown memory lane.” Happy focus grouping!Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect tothe research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.ReferencesDenham, M. A., & Onwuegbuzie, A. J. (2013a). Beyond words: Usingnonverbal communication data in research to enhance thickdescription and interpretation. International Journal of QualitativeMethods, 12, 670–696. doi:10.1177/1609406913012001372 International Journal of Qualitative MethodsDenham, M. A., & Onwuegbuzie, A. J. (2013b, June). The use of non-verbal communication data in qualitative research: Prevalence andcharacteristics. Microkeynote address presented at the Advances inQualitative Methods conference, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.Leech, N. L., & Onwuegbuzie, A. J. (2007). An array of qualitativedata analysis tools: A call for qualitative data analysis triangula-tion. School Psychology Quarterly, 22, 557–584. doi:10.1037/1045-3830.22.4.557Leech, N. L., & Onwuegbuzie, A. J. (2008). Qualitative data analysis:A compendium of techniques and a framework for selection forschool psychology research and beyond. School Psychology Quar-terly, 23, 587–604. doi:10.1037/1045-3830.23.4.587McAlister-Shields, L., Dickerson, S. H., Denham, M. A., & Onwueg-buzie, A. J. (2013, June). An introduction to focus groups. Work-shop conducted at the meeting of the 13th Annual ThinkingQualitatively Workshop Series, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.Onwuegbuzie, A. J., Dickinson, W. B., Leech, N. L., & Zoran, A. G.(2009). Toward more rigor in focus group research: A new frame-work for collecting and analyzing focus group data. InternationalJournal of Qualitative Methods, 8, 1–21. doi:10.1177/160940690900800301Onwuegbuzie, A. J., Dickinson, W. B., Leech, N. L., & Zoran, A. G.(2010). Toward more rigor in focus group research in stress andcoping and beyond: A new mixed research framework for collect-ing and analyzing focus group data. In G. S. Gates, W. H. Gmelch,& M. Wolverton (Series Eds.) & K. M. T. Collins, A. J. Onwueg-buzie, & Q. G. Jiao (Vol. Eds.), Toward a broader understandingof stress and coping: Mixed methods approaches (pp. 243–285).The Research on Stress and Coping in Education Series (Vol. 5).Charlotte, NC: Information Age.Onwuegbuzie, A. J., & Frels, R. K. (2015). A framework for conduct-ing critical dialectical pluralist focus group discussions usingmixed research techniques. Journal of Educational Issues, 1,159–177. doi:10.5296/jei.v1i2.8662. Retrieved from http://www.macrothink.org/journal/index.php/jei/article/view/8662/7086Onwuegbuzie, A. J., & Hitchcock, J. H. (2015). Advanced mixedanalysis approaches. In S. N. Hesse-Biber & R. B. Johnson (Eds.),Oxford handbook of multiple and mixed methods research (pp.275–295). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.Onwuegbuzie, A. J., Leech, N. L., Dickinson, W. B., & Zoran, A. G.(2011). Un marco cualitativo para la recolección y análisis de datosen la investigación basada en grupos focales [Toward more rigor infocus group research: A new framework for collecting and analyz-ing focus group data]. Paradigmas, 3, 127–157.Onwuegbuzie, A. J., McAllister-Shields, L., Dickerson, S., & Denham,M. A. (in press). Focus group research: Using a comprehensivemixed methods research approach. London, England: Sage.Wilkinson, S. (2004). Focus group research. In D. Silverman (Ed.),Qualitative research: Theory, method, and practice (pp. 177–199).Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Onwuegbuzie 3

Reflection/Commentary on a Past Article: “A Qualitative Framework for Collecting and Analyzing Data in Focus Group Research”: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/160940690900800301

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Reflection/Commentary on a Past Article: “A Qualitative Framework for Collecting and Analyzing Data in Focus Group Research”: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/160940690900800301

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