How Is This Edition Different?
We've tried to make this edition more fun to look at and read. The oversized pages, touch of color, and extra white space make the pages more appealing. We also added illustrations designed to make you smile.
The book is still full of advice based on years of experience conducting focus groups. It is designed as a guide and a reference book for those who are conducting focus groups, contracting for focus groups, or teaching about focus groups. We've included examples. We've outlined processes.
When compared to the first and second editions, this third edition has even more "how-to." There is an expanded description of how we plan focus group studies, examples of questions that ask participants to do more than just discuss, and suggestions on how to answer questions about your focus group research. There is also more on analysis. Faculty members have told us they wanted help teaching graduate students how to analyze focus group data. This can be an overwhelming, lonely, and frustrating part of doing focus groups. Our challenge was to make the process less nebulous. We have tried to outline the types of decisions we make when doing analysis in a step-by-step process. It is a more concrete description of analysis than in earlier editions.
There is also a new chapter that compares and contrasts four different approaches to focus group research: the market research approach, the academic approach, the nonprofit approach, and the participatory approach. The traditions, purposes, accepted practices, and expected outcomes of these approaches vary, but we haven't seen any writings that describe these differences. The chapter presents a range of ways focus groups are conducted.
Here is how the book is organized: Chapter 1 is intended to set the stage for focus group research. This section describes the history of focus groups and identify those essential elements that are needed to truly call it a focus group. Chapters 2 through 7 contain the best practices for conducting focus group research. Quality focus groups demand effective planning (Chapter 2), good questions (Chapter 3), skillful moderating (Chapter 4), selecting the right participants (Chapter 5), systematic analysis (Chapter 6), and appropriate reporting (Chapter 7). We've tried to suggest practical strategies for achieving good practice. The final chapters concentrate less on how-to strategies and more on special concerns and adaptations. Focus group research continues to evolve, and in Chapter 8, we suggest features and characteristics of four distinct paths. Chapter 9 gives an overview of how focus groups are being adapted to special audiences, and then in Chapter 10, we identify emerging uses of focus group research. In the final chapter (Chapter 11), we offer suggestions on how to answer questions about focus group research.
This book is particularly intended for aspiring researchers, so we give a lot of advice about how to do things-like we would suggest to a friend, a graduate student, or a client. But when talking to a friend or a client, we modify our advice to fit their situation. We can't be that specific in this book. So think about how our advice fits your audience and environment. The age, culture, lifestyle, or occupation of your participants may mean you have to modify the practices. For example, having precise beginning and ending times may be important in a corporate culture but be inappropriate in certain community settings. We don't mean for our advice to be rigid. Instead, use it as a way to get started, think about how it needs to be adapted, and get advice from wise ones.