Using Focus Groups by Ivana Acocella Silvia Cataldi

Author:Ivana Acocella, Silvia Cataldi [Ivana Acocella, Silvia Cataldi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Methodology, Reference, Research
ISBN: 9781526445612
Google: aWDfDwAAQBAJ
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 54232341
Publisher: SAGE
Published: 2020-10-12T02:49:19+00:00

During a focus group, the moderator should therefore choose a type of interaction among the participants like model B. Following this style, rather than addressing questions to individual participants, the moderator launches a discussion topic (represented in the figure by large curved arrows), leaving the participants free to interact (Hennink, 2014: 72–3).

Second, to stimulate a group discussion rather than a group interview, the moderator must prepare the stimuli that guide the debate keeping a community in mind. So, for example, he/she should avoid asking questions aimed at gathering information about individual motivations and personal experiences. This kind of question does not stimulate interaction between participants and does not engender a feeling of reciprocal belonging, but it pushes the group members to interact mainly with the moderator to make individual reflections (Meo, 2003b: 282). As detailed in section 6.1, questions should instead be formulated so as to encourage group formation and meanings sharing, in order to draw out intersubjective representations derived from the negotiation of positions and the contribution of all participants (Cardano, 2011: 21; Liamputtong, 2011: 16–18; Halkier, 2017: 406–7).

Concepts and Theories

Whereas in the ‘group interview’ an ‘external interaction’ prevails, where single individuals are considered as independent entities, the ‘group discussion’ encourages an ‘internal interaction’, developing dialogical relations among participants, which become ‘a constellation of interdependent constituents’. ‘The constellation defines its elements; and, vice versa, the elements define the unit in question […]. The participants are in a complementary dialogical engagement in communication and […], in and through communication they undergo both simultaneous and sequential changes’ (Marková et al., 2007: 9–10). In this way, the collective construction of an argument emerges as a collaborative procedure, rather than as an individual’s view.

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