Focus Groups: Research First Market Research Services

Focus Groups

Focus groups explore attitudes and perceptions about complex issues. As with all qualitative methods, focus groups are characterised by small sample sizes and probing open-ended questions. In many regards, it is this mix of qualities that provides the advantages of the approach. The appeal of focus groups to the social researcher comes from the depth (i.e., texture) of insight they provide; their flexibility to allow research processes and outcomes to develop in novel and unsuspected ways; their ability to target specific subgroups within a population to study; and their ability to reproduce social processes for opinion development.

In more detail, these strengths are:

Depth of Insight: The great appeal of focus groups to researchers is in their ability to ‘get close to the data’. The method enables respondents to express their thoughts in their own words, using their own examples. It is this depth that enables researchers to ‘get beneath the surface’ of conventional survey responses. This added ‘texture’ to the data means focus groups are often used to augment conventional methods simply because they illustrate results in a concrete and understandable manner.
Flexibility: The nature of focus groups allows the researcher to change course in response to novel or interesting suggestions from the participants. In this regard, they are much more accommodating towards novelty than conventional, quantitative research techniques. Moreover, they provide the opportunity to uncover dimensions to the research question that would otherwise have been overlooked.
Ability to target specific subgroups: Given that the logic of focus groups is one that is illustrative rather than representative, the method enables researchers to target specific subgroups within a population. The main requirement is that the participants in any given focus group share some relevant characteristic. The depth of insight offered by focus groups is based on this initial shared understanding among participants.
Reproduce social processes: The focus group process works because it reflects how opinions and beliefs are created in the wider social world – that is, through social interaction. Focus groups provide the opportunity to process opinions in a social setting. The group setting takes advantage of the fact that people are social creatures to foster interchange between the respondents. In this regard, the group setting reflects natural, real-life settings. At their best, focus groups are more akin to a dinner party conversation than an unwelcome cross-examination from a stranger (as surveys can sometimes seem). The spontaneity this engenders ‘reduces defence mechanisms and self-editing and encourages respondents to share actual opinions’.

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Focus Groups