Focus Group Data Analysis

As previously mentioned, we will be using focus groups as our method of gathering data. The site/date that we will be using for our focus groups is our classroom on the 17th of November, and will consist of our classmates willing to participate in our focus group. For our second focus group, we have not set a date/location, but soon will, and will have participants who are all CI students between the ages of nineteen and twenty-six years old. The site what we will be using will hopefully be a classroom, or even an empty discussion room where we can conduct our research and have a private, safe environment for our participants. Our method of distributing this information on our research and our need for participants is by going through student
housing and asking students to participate in our research study. Also we will be asking our friends to participate, and through use of the snowballing strategy/technique, requesting that they will tell their friends and we will have a sufficient number of people in our focus groups. The snowballing strategy/technique is a the perfect way to conduct the promoting of our research study because as a small group and small University.
By using snowballing, it is using word of mouth technique for example I tell my roommates about the focus group and if they tell their friends and their friends tell another person. And participants actually show up to the focus group the snowballing technique would be a success. The next step we will take as a group before we conduct our focus group is that we need to all sit down and agree on a consent form. By sitting down together we can all have an equal input in what our consent form will have on it and something that we can all agree on. We will also explain why we are having this focus group, inform our participants that everything they say is confidential and only our teacher is going to see it. We will provide them with informed consent, letting them know that this focus group is completely voluntary, and that they may leave anytime if they feel uncomfortable and may choose not to respond to any questions if they feel uncomfortable. In our consent form we will also tell them and assure them this focus group is for research and that everything they say is completely confidential and that they should be completely honest with us about
everything.

Discussion of Instrument The instrument we have decided to use is a focus group.
Focus groups are the most popular form of group interviewing in the qualitative field, and they can be very useful for understanding different opinions on a topic. Also, focus groups can help us to understand the collaborative process of meaning construction and communication performances of the group. (Lindloff, Taylor, 2011, p.183). Aside from the convenience of only having to organize one meeting for the interviewing process, we decided to use a focus group in order to see the “group effect” of our topic. We are very interested to see whether complimentary or argumentative interactions are displayed. Also, we are curious as to what effect gender will have upon the communication performances. It may affect the answers to the questions, as in men and women may have similar opinions, and having a mixed gender focus group may affect how open people are with their
responses. We are designing our instrument (focus group guide) in a way that will assist our job of being good moderators. It isn’t easy to make people feel comfortable enough to share intimate information in a group setting, let alone when they know their answers will be revisited and analyzed. Therefore, we will communicate in the most supportive and casual way possible, while still staying on task. It will be hosted in a neutral space that encourages them to feel comfortable and relatively private. We will start with a few “icebreakers” which will hopefully make them laugh and relax a little. Then we will launch into the main questions, which are designed to both elicit specific responses and provoke further conversation among the group members. We hope to achieve a balance of individual answers and group dialogue pertaining to the questions. It should not be too structured, or we will run the risk of not hearing enough personal opinions.