Focus Group

A focus group is a group of people that provides some structure to a research setting. Most focus groups consist of 5 to 15 members, a moderator, and often a moderator's assistant. Focus group sessions are almost always tape-recorded or videotaped for later analysis. Analyses can range from a simple review of what the moderator understood, to what the members discussed or concluded, to complex content analyses of transcripts from the recorded groups, which may include psychological interpretations of the members’ nonverbal behaviors.

The focus group provides public relations researchers with information from a variety of people focusing on a single person, product, event, or organization. Focus groups have some similarity to in-depth interviews in that a focus group facilitator asks predetermined questions to focus group participants; they differ in that group members can add on to (“tag”) another member's answers or comments, and often are encouraged to do so.

The focus group is found in public relations primarily because it can be conducted quickly and fairly inexpensively. Focus groups are also used to pretest a promotion, product, or message, to prepare for larger surveys, or to provide more in-depth analysis of a survey in order to better understand the survey's results. A focus group, then, provides information from a variety of individuals about some issue or concern under some form of moderator control.

As noted, a major advantage of a focus group is its ability to gather “rich” data from the individuals assembled to discuss the research object. The disadvantages of focus groups are the cost of moderators and the inability to generalize to larger populations and to demographic group members. Because a focus group's results are heavily dependent on the skills of the moderator, obtaining a trained moderator is essential to conducting a good focus group. Although focus groups are typically regarded as a cheap way to gather information, the primary cost associated with them is the moderator. A good moderator can cost more than half a focus group's cost. The trained moderator, however, can overcome some of the problems associated with members, such as over- and undertalk-ative members who either try to monopolize the discussion or avoid discussion altogether.

Most focus group members are volunteers, and volunteers often participate because they are interested in the topic. Volunteers do not represent the larger population; therefore, the results cannot be generalized to that population. In most focus group situations, at least two and often three [Page 349]different focus groups are conducted to ensure that what one group says is similar to what a second group says. The third group will be used if the first two groups differ. When the research question does not consider demographic or psychographic differences, three groups per demographic or psychographic are required.

Depending on the research question under investigation and whether it requires organizational members to participate, some of whom may be subordinate to others, focus groups may differ in how they are conducted. Most focus groups meet in an arranged room, typically around a table or chairs placed in a U-shape when the research is gauging reaction to some promotion or product. Some rooms are equipped with two-way mirrors and hidden microphones so that observers can evaluate and rate the interaction; other rooms simply have a table and chairs and a tape recorder or video recorder and cameras out in the open. In a typical focus group, moderators sit at the end of the table, or in the table's 12 o'clock position, from which they can control who speaks through both verbal questions to specific members and eye contact or head nods to encourage or discourage member participation. The typical focus group lasts between one and three hours, including planned refreshment and bathroom breaks. The moderator operates from a scripted schedule of opening statements and “key” questions; sometimes the moderator will have written probe questions to further look into member responses. To get all members to talk, a typical opening will reinforce that all conversations—even recorded ones— will be edited so that no one will know who said what, that members’ comments are confidential, and that their anonymity will be maintained. This is usually reinforced as well at the end of the focus group.

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