Focus group

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A focus group is a form of qualitative research in which a group of people are asked about their perceptions, opinions, beliefs and attitudes towards a product, service, concept, advertisement, idea, or packaging.^[1] Questions are asked in an interactive group setting where participants are free to talk with other group members. The first focus groups were created at the Bureau of Applied Social Research in the USA, by associate director, sociologist Robert K. Merton.^[2] The term itself was coined by psychologist and marketing expert Ernest Dichter.^[3]

In marketing

In the world of marketing, focus groups are seen as an important tool for acquiring feedback regarding new products, as well as various topics. In particular, focus groups allow companies wishing to develop, package, name, or test market a new product, to discuss, view, and/or test the new product before it is made available to the public. This can provide invaluable information about the potential market acceptance of the product.

Focus Group is an interview, conducted by a trained moderator among a small group of respondents. The interview is conducted in an unstructured and natural way where respondents are free to give views from any aspect.

In social sciences

In the social sciences and urban planning, focus groups allow interviewers to study people in a more natural setting than a one-to-one interview. In combination with participant observation, they can be used for gaining access to various cultural and social groups, selecting sites to study, sampling of such sites, and raising unexpected issues for exploration. Focus groups have a high apparent validity - since the idea is easy to understand, the results are believable. Also, they are low in cost, one can get results relatively quickly, and they can increase the sample size of a report by talking with several people at once.^[4]

In usability engineering

In the Usability engineering, focus group is a survey method to collect the views of users on a software or website. This marketing method can be applied to computer products to better understand the motivations of users and their perception of the product. Unlike other methods of ergonomics, focus group implies several participants: users or future users of the application. The focus group can only collect subjective data, not objective data on the use of the application as the usability test for example.^[5]

Types of focus groups

Variants of focus groups include:

• Two-way focus group - one focus group watches another focus group and discusses the observed interactions and conclusion
• Dual moderator focus group - one moderator ensures the session progresses smoothly, while another ensures that all the topics are covered
• Dueling moderator focus group - two moderators deliberately take opposite sides on the issue under discussion
• Respondent moderator focus group - one and only one of the respondents are asked to act as the moderator temporarily
• Client participant focus groups - one or more client representatives participate in the discussion, either covertly or overtly
• Mini focus groups - groups are composed of four or five members rather than 6 to 12
• Teleconference focus groups - telephone network is used
• Online focus groups - computers connected via the internet are used

Traditional focus groups can provide accurate information, and are less expensive than other forms of traditional marketing research. There can be significant costs however : if a product is to be marketed on a nationwide basis, it would be critical to gather respondents from various locales throughout the country since attitudes about a new product may vary due to geographical considerations. This would require a considerable expenditure in travel and lodging expenses. Additionally, the site of a traditional focus group may or may not be in a locale convenient to a specific client, so client representatives may have to incur travel and lodging expenses as well.

Benefits/strengths of focus group discussions

• Group discussion produces data and insights that would be less accessible without interaction found in a group setting—listening to others’ verbalized experiences stimulates memories, ideas, and experiences in participants. This is also known as the group effect where group members engage in “a kind of ‘chaining’ or ‘cascading’ effect; talk links to, or tumbles out of, the topics and expressions preceding it” (Lindlof & Taylor, 2002, p. 182) ^[6]
• Group members discover a common language to describe similar experiences. This enables the capture of a form of “native language” or “vernacular speech” to understand the situation
• Focus groups also provide an opportunity for disclosure among similar others in a setting where participants are validated. For example, in the context of workplace bullying, targeted employees often find themselves in situations where they experience lack of voice and feelings of isolation. Use of focus groups to study workplace bullying therefore serve as both an efficacious and ethical venue for collecting data (see, e.g., Tracy, Lutgen-Sandvik, & Alberts, 2006) ^[7]

Problems and criticism

Focus groups are "One shot case studies" especially if they are measuring a property-disposition relationship within the social sciences, unless they are repeated.^[8] Focus groups can create severe issues of external validity, especially the reactive effects of the testing arrangement.^[9] A fundamental difficulty with focus groups (and other forms of qualitative research) is the issue of observer dependency: the results obtained are influenced by the researcher, raising questions of validity.

Another issue is with the setting itself. If the focus groups are held in a laboratory setting with a moderator who is a professor and the recording instrument is obtrusive, the participants may either hold back on their responses and/or try to answer the moderator's questions with answers the participants feel that the moderator wants to hear. Another issue with the focus group setting is the lack of anonymity. With all of the other participants, there can not be any guarantee of confidentiality. Again we have to deal with the issues of the reactive effects of the testing arrangement (See above).

Douglas Rushkoff^[10] argues that focus groups are often useless, and frequently cause more trouble than they are intended to solve, with focus groups often aiming to please rather than offering their own opinions or evaluations, and with data often cherry picked to support a foregone conclusion. Rushkoff cites the disastrous introduction of New Coke in the 1980s as a vivid example of focus group analysis gone bad. In addition there is anecdotal evidence of focus groups rebelling, for instance the name for the Ford Focus, was created by a focus group which had grown bored and impatient and the irony of this was not picked up by the marketing team.^{[citation needed]}

Jonathan Ive, Apple’s senior vice president of industrial design, also said that Apple had found a good reason not to do focus groups : "They just ensure that you don’t offend anyone, and produce bland inoffensive products."

United States government use of focus groups

The United States federal government makes extensive use of focus groups to assess public education materials and messages for their many programs. While many of these are appropriate for the purpose, many others are reluctant compromises which federal officials have had to make as a result of studies independent of whether a focus group is the best or even appropriate methodology.

Focus groups in art

Swedish artist Måns Wrange has used the concept of the focus group in his work The Good Rumor Project[1]. In this instance the focus group situation is used not only as a means to investigate the opinions of the group members, but also to spread an idea (the rumor) across society with the help of the group members.

See also

• Coolhunting
• Comparison of usability evaluation methods
• Crowd manipulation
• Enterprise Feedback Management (EFM)
• Innovation game
• Customer advisory council
• Urtak
• Usability engineering

References

1. ^ Henderson, Naomi R. (2009). Managing Moderator Stress: Take a Deep Breath. You Can Do This!. Marketing Research, Vol. 21 Issue 1, p28-29.
2. ^ Michael T. Kaufman (February 24, 2003). "Robert K. Merton, Versatile Sociologist and Father of the Focus Group, Dies at 92". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/24/nyregion/robert-k-merton-versatile-sociologist-and-father-of-the-focus-group-dies-at-92.html. 
3. ^ Lynne Ames (August 2, 1998). "The View From/Peekskill; Tending the Flame of a Motivator". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/1998/08/02/nyregion/the-view-from-peekskill-tending-the-flame-of-a-motivator.html?n=Top%2FNews%2FScience%2FTopics%2FResearch. 
4. ^ Marshall, Catherine and Gretchen B. Rossman. 1999. Designing Qualitative Research. 3rd Ed. London: Sage Publications, p. 115
5. ^ Jakob Nielsen (1993) Usability Engineering. Academic Press, Boston.
6. ^ Lindlof, T. R., & Taylor, B. C. (2002). Qualitative Communication Research Methods, 2nd Edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
7. ^ Tracy, S. J., Lutgen-Sandvik, P., & Alberts, J. K. (2006). Nightmares, demons and slaves: Exploring the painful metaphors of workplace bullying. Management Communication Quarterly, 20, 148-185.
8. ^ Nachmais, Chava Frankfort; Nachmais, David. 2008. Research methods in the Social Sciences: Seventh Edition New York, NY: Worth Publishers
9. ^ Campbell, Donald T., Stanley, Juilian C. Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Designs for Research. Chicago, IL: Rand McNally
10. ^ Rushkoff, Douglas, Get back in the box : innovation from the inside out, New York : Collins, 2005

External links

• Focus Groups at Usability.gov
• The British Market Research Association The Industry body governing focus groups in the UK
• Focus Group Principles (archived) American Marketing Association
• Dos and don'ts for using marketing focus groups Microsoft