The Story Behind Focus Group Interviews
Focus groups have become popular. Over the past three decades, the label focus groups has been applied to many different group encounters-indeed, some require a stretch of imagination to be called focus groups! We have heard town meetings, reading groups, and study circles being called focus groups. Recently, more than 300 people gathered in a school auditorium for what was called a "focus group." We know it wasn't a focus group because it didn't contain the essential elements of focus group interviewing. These essential elements grew out of early work with focus group interviewing.
In the late 1930s, social scientists began investigating alternative ways of conducting interviews. Some social scientists had doubts about the accuracy of traditional individual interviews that used a predetermined questionnaire with closed-ended response choices. This approach had a major disadvantage: The respondent was limited by the choices offered, and therefore the findings could be unintentionally influenced by the interviewer through oversight or omission. Stuart A. Rice was one of the first social scientists to express concern. In 1931, he wrote,
A defect of the interview for the purposes of factfinding in scientific research, then, is that the questioner takes the lead. That is, the subject plays a more or less passive role. Information or points of view of the highest value may not be disclosed because the direction given the interview by the questioner leads away from them. In short, data obtained from an interview are as likely to embody the preconceived ideas of the interviewer as the attitudes of the subject interviewed. (Rice, 1931, p. 561)
Social scientists began exploring strategies whereby the researcher would take on a less directive and dominating role. Respondents would be able to comment on the areas they thought were most important. Nondirective interviewing shifted attention from the interviewer to the respondent, placing emphasis on getting in tune with the reality of the interviewee. Nondirective interviews used open-ended questions and allowed individuals to respond without setting boundaries or providing clues for potential response categories. The open-ended approach allowed the subject ample opportunity to comment, explain, and share experiences and attitudes. Nondirective interviewing increased in appeal in the late 1930s and 1940s. Roethlisberger and Dickson (1938) cited it in studies of employee motivation and Carl Rogers (1942) in psychotherapy.
During World War II, social scientists began using the nondirective interviewing technique in groups-the beginning of focus groups. In one of the first focus group studies, Robert Merton explored morale in the U.S. military for the War Department. He found that people revealed sensitive information when they felt they were in a safe, comfortable place with people like themselves. Many of the procedures that have come to be accepted as common practice in focus group interviews were set forth in the classic work by Robert K. Merton, Marjorie Fiske, and Patricia L. Kendall, The Focused Interview (1956).
Although Merton is and was a giant in sociology, most academics did not embrace the focused interview. In fact, Merton's pioneering work laid dormant in the social sciences for decades. The acceptance of focus groups and of qualitative research methods in general was delayed in academic circles for a variety of reasons-a preoccupation with quantitative procedures, assumptions about the nature of reality, and a societal tendency to believe in numbers. Social science research paid attention to experimental designs, control groups, and randomization. This sojourn with numbers has been beneficial because we gained in our experimental sophistication, but it also nurtured a desire for more understanding of the human experience. Too often, the quantitative approaches were based on imperfect assumptions about people, things, or reality in general.
Even though academics weren't interested in focus groups, the pragmatic market research community embraced focus groups beginning in the 1950s. Business was booming after the war, and market researchers were charged with finding out how to make their company's product most attractive to potential customers.
Focus group interviews are widely accepted within marketing research because they produce believable results at a reasonable cost. Business owners know the importance of creating a desirable product, advertising that product, and introducing that product to the public.
The sensible strategy is to stay in touch with customers. Products have undergone major revisions in design, packaging, or advertising due to findings in focus groups. Advertising campaigns often focus on what the consumer considers to be the positive attributes of the product. For example, soft drink companies discovered via focus groups that consumers often drink beverages because of the sociability features associated with the product, not because they are thirsty. It is no wonder that slogans promoting these beverages highlight how "things go better" or increase personal popularity on the beach (Bellenger, Bern-hardt, 8c Goldstrucker, 1976).
Since the 1950s, the use of focus groups in the for-profit sector has grown so much that a whole industry has been created to support focus group research. In every major city across the United States, market research firms provide services relating to focus groups: finding the right participants, recruiting them, catering for groups, rooms with one-way mirrors, and video- and audiotaping options. In every major city, there are also professional focus group moderators who spend their lives conducting focus groups for businesses. The technique had evolved since Merton's time from a social science research method to a method designed to serve businesses well.
In the 1980s, academics began rediscovering focus group interviewing, often learning from market researchers. But some of the accepted practices in business focus groups just didn't work well in academic or nonprofit settings. Academics took some of the practical strategies from market researchers and adapted the technique to work with other audiences. These scholars also returned to the work of Merton to learn how the technique was originally used.
Several distinct approaches to focus group interviewing have evolved since Merton began his work. One approach emerges out of the consumer-oriented market research tradition. Another emerges from the academic and scientific environment. A third approach is found in the nonprofit and public environment. Yet a fourth comes from the participatory, research environment where community members or volunteers are involved as researchers in the study. Each approach is distinctive but has the common elements of focus group research. These different approaches are discussed in greater length in Chapter 8.