Well I've held my first focus group. I have to admit it got away from me a little. I was obvious that the topic was important to my participants and I didn't really need to do much work to get the discussion rolling......in fact I hardly talked at all. I explained my inquiry and the areas I wanted to research and they were off. I didn't ask any of my questions but they all got covered by the end of the session. I wasn't sure what would emerge after analysis but it turned out to be surprising. Some points where as expected through discussions I have had previously with colleagues regarding motivation but there were a few new ideas and opinions that I wasn't expecting. In a skype session with Adesola we talked about themes that emerge whilst researching and that helped me when starting to analysing my focus group. Gibbs (2007) suggests sometimes it is more beneficial to look at the bigger picture that to get bogged down in the detail of what a person said. I decided to take their advice and listen back to my recording of the session and take note of any re-occurring themes.
Adesola also discussed the need to control. We all have ideas of how we want our inquiry to unfold but Adesola suggested that by controlling our research too much we could be in danger of closing our inquiry off to possible ideas we may not have considered. She talked about how sometimes when she would listen to her recordings of interviews she would hear herself bringing the interviewer back to topic when they where discussing a new possible idea of interest, Adesola told me that she sometimes wished that she would of let the person continue with their thought as it might have opened up new avenues for her to research. I kept this in mind with my own focus group and I feel it was an invaluable piece of advice
Adesola's Blog on Data collection and themes
Gibbs, G (2007). Analysing Qualitative Data. London: Sage Publications Ltd. 10 – 23.
Hi Della.
ReplyDeleteYou say your focus group 'got away from you a little.' Obviously not having been there myself/not knowing the responses of any of the participants, but it sounds pretty successful! Just wondering if you had had the chance to carry out any sort of mock focus group during the planning stages of the inquiry, or if this literally was the first foray into data collection using this method! I carried out interviews using members of drama staff as the participants in my inquiry, and if I were to repeat this process again, I would in hindsight have carried out a focus group so that the pressure on participants to talk was lessened and they could potentially have bounced ideas off of one another. In addition, less input from you as the instigator of the discussion group may have meant you had more time to fully focus and concentrate during the session and what was said. Also, you wouldn't be influencing any of the participant responses with ideas you might have read in literature etc.
Pip