How to conduct focus group interviews

1. FOCUS
GROUPS AND Interviews
Dr Nancy Thumim
5600 Dissertation and Research Methods

2. Your goals today
• Understand how interviews and focus groups
can be used in media and communications
research
• Have a sense of some of the things you need
to think about if you are planning to use these
research methods for your dissertation project
• Have a sense of the methodological issues
you should address in your dissertation

3. Interviews and Focus Groups
‘If you want to know how people understand their world
and their lives,why not talk to them?’ (Kvale, 2007: 1).
• Providing access to personal accounts and
interpretations
• Understanding life worlds and systems of beliefs
• Behaviour and opinion in social context
• Build on ‘natural’, conversational communication to get
access to information and perception
• Generate framework for further research (Gaskell, 2000)
• Test expectations and hypotheses

4. • A kind of probe (Berger, 1998)
• Single respondent or a group of respondents
• Conversation with a clear focus
‘Aims to map and understand the respondents’ life world
…The objective is a fine-textured understanding of
beliefs, attitudes, values and motivations in relation to
the behaviours of people in particular social contexts’
(Gaskell, 2000: 39).
Context: There is not one interview – never
underestimate the national, linguistic & cultural
specificities & specific professional practice

5. Types of Interview
• ‘Structured
• Fixed questions, always asked in the same way,
no deviation
• Unstructured
• Conversation, no pre-determined questions,
general focus but participant drives the direction
• Semi-structured
• ‘enhanced’ conversation, questions similar but
order and direction of conversation can vary
• Focus group

6. Power in the interview context
• Asymmetry between interviewer and
interviewee
• Interviewer sets the agenda
• Interviewer directs the questions
• Interviewer interprets and analyses
• Study ‘sideways’
• Origins of power are multiple
• Commonalities are always present
• Scope to approach the interview as dialogue,
negotiated meaning and the construction of
‘common horizons’ of knowledge
Plesner, 2011

7. Identity and rapport
• Fluid rather than fixed
• A process that changes as we interact with the
participants
• Part of the process of building rapport
• Assumptions are made and changed during the
process of the interview
• ‘Alliance-building’
• ‘the process in which researchers highlight or
downplay particular aspects of their identities during
an interview to develop rapport with their
participants.’
• What you say about yourself changes what they
say and how they respond to you

8. Voices, silence and space
‘Interviews — with individuals and in group
settings —are a contingent process in which
spontaneity and creativity, as well as tension and
conflict, are produced on the parts of both
interviewee and interviewer.’
Raxon & Ross, 2012: 496

9. Example: The Mediated City: The
News in a post industrial context
• Project looking at how news travels round a
city
• 6 focus groups to investigate citizens
understanding of what local news is, what they
think it should be and how it travels around the
city
• Leeds based: recruited according to media
habits and then we added a further group of
BAME citizens.

10. Example: The Mediated City
What such macro-analyses cannot tell us is how people in
Leeds feel about their relationship to news. Is it something
that is produced by others and either consumed or ignored
by the public as an audience? Do people know what news
looks like when they see it? Do different people have
different conceptions of what constitutes news? Are there
ways in which people interact with the news, without
necessarily assuming the role of journalists? Do people
have hopes about the kind of news ecology they would like
to live in? Can they imagine news in new and different
forms? More than just a set of questions about how it feels
to live in a local world of news (paradox intended), we
wanted to learn more about how people know what is going
on in their local environment – the feeling of being locally
connected. […] To live in a city is a kind of cultural
immersion that surveys are unlikely to capture or describe
(Coleman et al 2016, 29).

11. Example: The Mediated City
‘They tell you all the negative, bad things happening in
communities, as opposed to the good things. So it
forms your attitudes, even on a relaxed level like ‘I
don’t like them because of this and this’… There could
be other things that happen that don’t get focused on.’
(Female, group 1) (Coleman et al 2016, 102).
We began this chapter by suggesting that living in a
city involves a certain kind of relationship; a feel for
place; a sense that one’s presence matters. In our
focus group discussions we heard accounts of how
such relationships were both nurtured and let down at
different times by local media (op cit, p107)

12. In Practice… Who do you interview?
• ALWAYS Driven by your research question
– you need to be able to justify your choice of
interviewees
• Do you need a range of ages, backgrounds?
• Do you need a specific gender balance?
• Do your interviewees need to represent a
particular group?
• Strategies for selecting/ recruiting people e.g.
snowballing, via organisations , friends,
strangers
• How many people to interview??

13. In practice… Group or Individual
interview?
• Focus Group usually 5-8 members
encouraged to participate and comment on
each other’s words
• to move away from a one-direction interaction
to a group dynamic
• Explore range of opinions (and life worlds in
depth)
• Individual in-depth interviews 45 minutes or
more usually probing individual feelings,
thoughts, perspectives

14. In Practice…The Interview Guide
• Think of the main topics you want to cover – think
keywords or themes and/or specific questions
• Do you want a debate? Do you want a
discussion?
• Plan ahead and think human communication and
conversation (listen, respect, be aware of your
position, stay ‘neutral’)
• Discuss and test the questions in advance (in a
group setting for focus groups…)
• Stay focused
• Keep distance as necessary and be encouraging
when needed

15. What Kinds of Questions?
• Short and long answers – what you want to know
should guide you
• Provide open questions – get them to talk (the ‘grand
tour’)
• Start with factual questions/leave sensitive
questions for the end
• Think about phrasing of questions / language used
• Clear questions – do not guide your interviewees
• Avoid complex concepts which might confuse or
intimidate interviewees
• But be honest treat them with respect

16. In Practice…Conducting The
Interview
• Use prompts to gain more insight and detail
• Ask for examples and anecdotes – keep it real
• Be prepared to go off-topic / planned order a
little
• Give chance for interviewees to ask questions
in the end
Leech, 2002; Plesner, 2011

17. In Practice… Conducting the
Interview (ethically)
• Explain in simple words what the interview is
about and how long it will last
• Discuss confidentiality and consent form
• Ask permission to record or take notes
• Consider how will you manage the group / group
size / group dynamics

18. In Practice… More about Ethical
Research
• Crucial: Confidentiality and obtaining informed
consent
• Participants should know what you will do with the
data
• Declare any conflict of interests
• Protect participant personal information – data
storage key
• You cannot proceed to fieldwork until you receive
Ethics approval
• You cannot conduct research with people under
age 18 or vulnerable groups – Research Ethics
Guidance for the Dissertation

19. Practicalities
• Never underestimate the importance of checking
the technology – two recorders are better than
one!
• Prepare for different behaviour/reactions
• Write down where people are sitting to aid in
identifying speakers later
• Location? Refreshments? Two people to hold the
event?
• Make notes afterwards: what was it like; did
anyone dominate, did you get through your
questions, what are your general impressions?

20. Analysing the data
• Good quality transcript – deal as live conversation
• Immerse yourself in the text and spend time with it
• Mark, highlight, label, and re-read data/use
software (e.g.NVivo)
• Revisit aims and objectives/research questions
• Make notes when reading the text and cross-check
with other material
• Develop themes and categories of behaviour and
opinions (an interpretative framework)

21. questions?