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KEY WORDS: qualitative research methods, methodology, focus groups, group interviews
ABSTRACT
Over the past decade, focus groups and group interviews have reemerged as a popular technique for gathering qualitative data, both among sociologists and across a wide range of academic and applied research areas. Focus groups are currently used as both a self-contained method and in combination with surveys and other research methods, most notably individual, in-depth interviews. Comparisons between focus groups and both surveys and individual interviews help to show the specific advantages and disadvantages of group interviews, concentrating on the role of the group in producing interaction and the role of the moderator in guiding this interaction. The advantages of focus groups can be maximized through careful attention to research design issues at both the project and the group level. Important future directions include: the development of standards for reporting focus group research, more methodological research on focus groups, more attention to data analysis issues, and more engagement with the concerns of the research participants.
INTRODUCTION
Although some form of group interviewing has undoubtedly existed for as long as sociologists have been collecting data (e.g. Bogardus 1926), the past decade has produced a remarkable surge of interest in group interviews generally and focus groups in particular. Much of this interest first surfaced in the mid-1980s. In 1987, Robert Merton published remarks that compared his pioneering work on "focused interviews" (Merton & Kendall 1946) with marketers' uses of the focus group, while John Knodel and his collaborators (Knodel et al 1987) published a summary of their focus group research on demographic changes in Thailand. The next year produced two book-length treatments of focus groups by social scientists (Krueger 1988/1994, Morgan 1988). This initial burst of interest was followed by other texts (Stewart & Shamdasani 1990, Vaughn et al 1996), a reissuing of Merton et al's original manual (Merton et al 1956/1990), an edited collection of more advanced material (Morgan 1993a), and at least two special issues of journals (Carey 1995, Knodel 1995).
The current level of interest in focus group interviews is evident from searches of Sociological Abstracts, Psychological Abstracts, and the Social Science Citation Index. All of these sources show a steady growth in research using focus groups, indicating that well over a...