Exam 7: Focus Groups

Hydén and Bülow suggest that the moderator encourage people to talk as though they were ________ to establish an informal, open atmosphere in which all the participants feel comfortable participating and freely expressing their opinions.

The ________ is the individual who facilitates focus groups. This person guides the group with as little intervention as possible while maintaining the group's focus.

Rebecca Hall's findings from her study of how diamond mines affected the way Indigenous women in the Northwest Territories were key in showing how to move beyond the deficit model that assumes that any problems Indigenous people have reflect some inner weakness or inferiority.

Some focus group researchers have separate groups for men and women because ________.

Focus groups are a standalone researcher technique. For instance, a researcher should not use focus groups to help develop questions for additional surveys or interviews.

Explain the difference between talking circles and focus groups. Make sure to discuss the strengths and limitations of talking circles when conducting research with Indigenous communities.

In the forming stage of a focus group, it is time for the moderator to wind things up by summarizing the discussion and asking if anyone has anything to add to the summary.

Raj has just completed his focus group study of team dynamics amongst university athletes and is trying to make sense of the data. His focus groups each included six athletes-a basketball player, a field hockey player, a golfer, a diver, a soccer player, and a gymnast. During the data collection, Raj had difficulty moderating the conversation and found that conversation was minimal even after asking probing questions. In this case, sparking spontaneous, rich group conversation was likely difficult because ________.

In general, focus groups aim to achieve a consensus among participants who are discussing the research topic.

David L. Morgan calls ________ the "Achilles heel" of focus groups because if the members of each group are not compatible, there will not be a rich discussion.

Focus-group studies are an easy, short way to collect data.

Focus group researchers often use different recruitment strategies than in-depth interviewers.

The main difference between focus groups and in-depth interviews is ________.

Lia Litosseliti describes the stages of conducting a focus group. Names these stages and briefly explain what happens in each stage.

Briefly explain how sociologists and market researchers have used focus groups.

Focus group interview guides should include transitional questions or statements. An example of a transitional question is ________.

Patrick wants to learn more about how older Canadians at retirement facilities use social media to talk about grief. Since his participants already know each other and are all located in the same place, he decides that it is the perfect opportunity to use ________. Patrick will organize groups of men and women to conduct in-depth interviewing in a moderated group discussion. Patrick will use the content of the conversation as data, as well as to analyze the interactions among participants.

Focus groups that were once used to develop propaganda materials and to create training manuals for soldiers were referred to as ________.

When Beverly Holbrook and Peter Jackson failed to recruit participants for a focus group using a traditional marketing-research method that involves calling potential participants, they ________.

Discuss the following claim: "Moderating focus groups is easy."