Academic Research Approach
Even though academics created the focused interview, the academic community did not embrace the method at first. For some time, academics were apprehensive about focus group interviews because of the difficulties in analysis and the seeming contamination of the interview process. Academics were concerned because in focus group interviews, people talked to one another. They heard each other's views. Also, individual respondents sometimes expressed different and even opposite opinions. Participants were not always consistent! This phenomenon had not been seen in individual interviews, and it was now a concern when it occurred in group discussions. Were people

influencing each other? Was this an example of contamination? Were some people with strong personalities dominating others? The group process seemed uncontrolled, confusing, and complex. Academics weren't able to neatly isolate influencing factors.
But the success of focus groups in the market research environment did not go unnoticed. Academics began to reexamine the potential for focus group research in the early 1980s. Some were wondering if focus groups could get a different kind of information than individual interviews or surveys. They could. For example, in our work on needs assessments with Midwest farmers, we found that the survey process wasn't providing useable results. Later we discovered in focus groups that we weren't asking the "right" questions. We thought farmers would attend educational sessions if they indicated they needed the information on a needs assessment survey. But farmers told us in focus groups, "Just because I need it, doesn't mean I'll go." The right question became, "What would it take to get you to go?" They said they were more likely to go if:
* the experience seemed like it would be fun,
* there was an opportunity to meet other farmers,
* the course seemed useful and was being taught by someone who had practical experience ("grease under their fingernails"), and
* if they were personally told it would be a good course by someone they trusted, such as their veterinarian or banker or another farmer.
All of these findings made sense, and we wondered why we hadn't thought of them earlier. We had trapped ourselves into thinking that attendance was primarily influenced by a perception of need for the subject.
When academic researchers began doing focus groups, they built on their rich experiences with individual interviewing and content analysis. The academics brought with them several strategies and traditions that were distinctly different from the contributions of market researchers.
Openness was foremost. Although in the past, the proprietary reports of market researchers were confidential and access was severely restricted for fear of helping the competition, this type of confidentiality was not in the tradition of academics. In fact, their tradition was quite the opposite. The position of the academic was, "Unless my colleagues know how I recruited participants, conducted the groups, and performed the analysis, how can they adequately critique my work?" Openness was essential to academic adoption. Academic promotion was influenced by peer review and publication in refereed journals, and these factors demanded that colleagues be able to see the details of the process.
Rigor was expected. The analysis process no longer was secret. It wasn't done in closed environments with restricted access. Now the results were available, and other researchers were invited to look over the analysis protocol and comment. Analysis had to be defensible, systematic, and verifiable. Some of the earlier market research analysis was done mentally, in the heads of moderators based on memory and a few notes. This was not acceptable in an academic environment. The data had to be captured in multiple forms-field notes and audiotapes. Transcripts were used in the analysis. Researchers used computer , software analysis programs as they coded, categorized, and interpreted the findings.
Timing took on a different meaning. Academics were under a very different timeframe than were the market researchers. Quality academic research took time-often months or years to complete. By contrast, market researchers needed to have results ready in hours or days.
People in academic environments learn to do focus groups by reading, taking courses, and doing the research. Unless a graduate student is lucky, there is not much coaching because faculty members are juggling a dozen different things, and there isn't time for individual mentoring. Graduate students often help or even conduct a fair amount of the research. At times, the goal of academic research is not just to provide defensible results but also to enhance the capacity of these graduate students. Sometimes faculty add elements to the design because it enriches the learning opportunities of the graduate student. For example, sometimes graduate students are asked to transcribe their focus groups. Not a popular thing to ask of a graduate student! Probably a professional typist could type it faster, but then the graduate student would not have the intense familiarity needed to undertake later analysis steps.
The location of the research changed. Academics went to the target audience. The special focus group rooms were often in the wrong locations, too intimidating, or too expensive. As a result, academics began using alternative locations such as homes, public meeting rooms, and restaurants.
The audience changed. Academics, in general, were less concerned about consumer products. Their attention was on issues such as public health, education, the environment, and policy issues. As a result, many different types of people were invited to focus groups. This included low-income audiences, people of color, people who had difficulty speaking English, youth, international audiences, and others.
Academics also started to provide incentives for participation. Although monetary incentives had been used to encourage people to participate in medical research, it was less common in other fields. Researchers needed to develop processes for providing these incentives.
BACKGROUND
If you would tike to read more about focus groups using an academic research approach, you might consider the following:
Morgan, D. L. (1997). Focus groups as qualitative research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Vaughn, S., Schummn, j. S., & Sinagub, J. (1996). Focus group interviews in education and psychology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.