One of the frequently stated advantages of focus group research is that these “group interviews” allow researchers to examine how the group interactions affected people’s perceptions and decision-making. On the other hand, one of the frequent criticisms of reports of focus groups is there is no analysis of group processes. In a study using focus groups to describe military health care provider’s perceptions of their experience when deployed to Iraq, we developed a method to examine specifically the group processes. From past experience, one of the authors found after several focus groups they tended to blur together and with only interview data to refer to it was hard to analyze the group process. To overcome this problem, we developed a series of questions that specifically addressed group interactions. Examples of these questions were: what did you think of the group? What was the tone? Were there dominant personalities in the group? Who were the quiet participants? Did this affect the group? Were there gender and hierarchical issues? How did they effect communication? Did anyone indicate a change in thinking because of remarks made by another participant? The last question was to describe how this focus group compared to other groups. Immediately after the focus group, the research team members who observed the focus group would meet and discuss these questions before reviewing anything else. In addition, each person would write out their observations to the questions on a group interaction contact sheet. This process allowed us to specifically address the group process and produce data for further analysis. We found the results of this process to be helpful and meaningful in examining and reporting the group effect and cross-group comparisons in our study.
Session #1123 - Qualitative Research Symposium: Complex Designs
The 29th Annual MNRS Research Conference (April 1-4, 2005)