Equality and differences: group interaction in mixed focus groups of users and professionals discussing power

In the two sections of this article, I examine aspects of the analysis and reporting of interaction in focus groups. In both sections, I argue that the essential importance of interaction for producing the data in focus groups does not correspond to any requirement that the analysis or the reporting of that data should emphasize interaction. With regard to analyzing interaction, the goals of the research should guide the analysis of the data, and those goals might or might not emphasize interaction. In particular, a great deal of focus group research is conducted for substantive and practical purposes, where the analysis typically requires little attention to the dynamics of interaction in those groups. With regard to reporting interaction, quotations from single individuals can often be the most efficient and effectives ways to accomplish an article's goals; however, I also discuss the kinds of situations where there are good reasons to report interaction among the participants. I conclude by briefly describing a different agenda for examining the importance of interaction in focus groups.

Interaction among participants is the fundamental mechanism that generates data in focus groups. Despite calls for ways to analyze interaction in focus groups, there is still an unmet need to develop such tools. We present a coding system to investigate interaction by emphasizing how participants use the substantive aspects of the topics they discuss. We then apply it to the question of how conversations in dyadic interviews (with two participants) compare to discussions in focus groups (with four or more participants). We find that dyadic interviews are more likely to contain explicit connections to the content of the previous speaker’s statement, and to generate more statements of agreement, indicating a higher degree of mutual attunement. These results demonstrate the effectiveness of our coding system in one particular context. We conclude by considering both the limitations of this system and the possibilities for extending it in future research.

Group interaction is put forward as the principal advantage for focus group research, although rarely reported on. The aim of the article is to contribute to the methodological knowledge regarding focus group research by providing an empirical example of the application of the Lehoux, Poland, and Daudelin template suggested for analysis of the interaction in focus groups. The data source was 18 focus groups' performance in Sweden: 12 with older patients and 6 with general practitioners (GPs). GPs found common ground in belonging to the same profession, whereas the older patients, instead of constituting a group in the word's real sense, started just sharing a common focus. We found the template easy to understand and use, except for identifying participants' explicit and implicit purposes for participating. Furthermore, adding an interaction analysis to the content analysis helped us appreciate and clarify the contexts from which these data were created.

Focus groups have been theorized along a continuum, ranging from different types of scientific realism to various forms of social constructivism. One of the main points of disagreement relates to the understanding of the relations between the content of expressions in the focus group and the social dynamics of group interactions. A crucial question is the extent to which the patterns of expression in focus group interactions are recognizable (socially and culturally) in relation to participants’ everyday lives. Alternatively, these can be viewed as being uniquely situational. This chapter examines how recognizability is discussed in the existing focus group literature. A practice theoretical perspective is offered as allowing researchers to take a middle position, to enable focus group data to shed light both upon patterns of everyday activities across contexts and to illuminate situational negotiations as patterns are made and re-made. It is argued that recognizability can be produced through employing strategies, such as network groups and media representations. Empirical examples are drawn from work on contested food habits.

The value of taking advantage of the participants’ interactions when analyzing focus group data is often stressed. However, there is a lack of detailed descriptions of how focus group data can be merged with interview data, and considered throughout a thematic analysis process. This article describes a systematic way to include focus group interactions in data analysis, using a coding scheme. The aim was threefold: to develop a coding scheme for focus group interactions; to test and describe a process for interaction analysis, merged into the thematic data analysis process, and to test the coding scheme on another dataset. Based on focus group literature a comprehensive coding scheme for analyzing focus group interactions, was developed, including symbols for these interactions. Data from five focus group interviews involving adolescents were subsequently coded using this scheme. Further analysis of the identified interactions was conducted simultaneously with thematic data analysis, using Systematic Text Condensation (STC) as an illustrative method. The coding scheme was then tested on data from a different focus group involving adolescents in another setting. A comparison between the two coders was made, leading to a slight modification of the coding scheme. The resulting coding scheme is a practical tool adding to the previous knowledge on focus group interaction analysis. More specifically, the scheme facilitates focus group interactions to be visible and accounted for thought the thematic analysis process.

Focus groups are a useful method for sociological research because the sociable interaction that is generated can yield rich insight into people’s life worlds. This is because the nature of the talk that is generated in focus groups is a mixture of personal beliefs and available collective narratives that are further flavored by the local circumstances of participants’ lives. The interactions between participantsin focus group discussions characteristically comprise layers of talk and present researchers with complex analytical tasks. In addition to what participants say about themselves, analysis and interpretation of focus group data must pay attention to the content and form of interaction between participants. This article discusses and illustrates how sociable interactions from focus groups were analyzed for insights into classed contexts for romantic relationships.

Focus group interviews have seen explosive growth in recent years. They provide evaluations of social science, educational, and marketing projects by soliciting opinions from a number of participants on a given topic. However, there is more to the focus group than soliciting mere opinions. Moving beyond a narrow preoccupation with topic talk, Gilbert and Matoesian take a novel direction to focus group analysis. They address how multimodal resources – the integration of speech, gesture, gaze, and posture – orchestrate communal relations and professional identities, linking macro orders of space-time to microcosmic action in a focus group evaluation of community policing training. They conceptualize assessment as an evaluation ritual, a sociocultural reaffirmation of collective identity and symbolic maintenance of professional boundary enacted in aesthetically patterned oratory. In the wake of social unrest and citizen disillusionment with policing practice, Gilbert and Matoesian argue that processes of multimodal interaction provide a critical direction for focus group evaluation of police reforms. Their book will be of interest to researchers who study focus group interviews, gesture, language and culture, and policing reform.

ObjectivesThe aim of this study was to explore the experiences of doctors and nurses caring for patients with delirium in the intensive care unit (ICU) and to describe the process...

The purpose of this article is two-fold. Firstly, we consider whether the setting up of mixed-gender focus group sessions has the potential as a research process to contribute to transforming people’s understandings of their gendered relationships. Secondly, we relate our discussion to the question of the mutability of stereotypical thinking in the context in question, taking into account the idea that cultures in different contexts can be seen as “in the making” through the way in which people together create meaning. We explain how the first author of the article organized focus groups which were mixed in terms of gender with the purpose that the adult learner participants could develop their perceptions as they related to each other around the topic of gender inequalities.). The sessions were conducted in two adult learning Centers located in a rural and an urban area respectively – Xola and Zodwa – within the Cacadu District of the Eastern Cape, South Africa. Two mixed focus groups took place in 2016 (one in each Center, with 19 females and 5 males altogether), and a follow up took place in 2018, to further discuss recommendations. In 2022, another set of focus group sessions was arranged in the same Centers, with 10 females and 6 males who were asked to participate and agreed. As part of a related discussion on gendered relationships, they were asked specific questions regarding how they understood the value of the mixed-gender conversations. Results from the various sets of groups suggest that focus groups can indeed help people to explore and rethink gender disparities and to think of ways forward in terms of enriched understandings. We recommend that mixed-gender focus group sessions should be regarded by researchers as a potential space to fruitfully set up a way for people to develop their sense of interdependence in their social relations.

As multiparty activities focus groups afford participants opportunities to interact with each other rather than only with the moderator. The methodological literature recommends focus groups for data generation precisely for these structural affordances, but few studies examine how the interaction in ongoing focus groups evolves. Consequently it remains largely obscure how focus groups produce disciplinary knowledge. Addressing this gap from the perspective of conversation analysis, the study examines focus group interaction as the participants’ joint accomplishment, with particular attention to the interactional practices that exhibit the participants’ orientation to the institutional activity and its agenda. The focus groups were conducted as part of a program evaluation study with Korean teachers of English who participated in a study-abroad teacher development program in the U.S. The analysis reveals how the participants contingently initiate activity and topic shifts in keeping with the institutional purpose and invoke their collective identity as an epistemic community as they jointly construct responses to the moderator’s questions. The conversation-analytic lens reveals how the focus groups generate profound, nuanced, and grounded knowledge about the program under evaluation from the perspective of the key stakeholders and by implication about the topical concerns for which the focus groups were conducted in the first place.

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate alternative strategies to enhance participant interaction in library focus groups.Design/methodology/approach– Descriptive alternatives strategies are suggested as techniques to enhance participant interaction in library focus groups.Findings– There are no findings as such, rather this is a paper which suggests different approaches than have hitherto be tried in library focus groups.Originality/value– There has not been a similar article or set of proposed alternative strategies on this subject in so far as library focus groups are concerned.

BackgroundSince the emergence of electronic health records, nursing information is increasingly being recorded and stored digitally. Several studies have shown that a wide range of nursing information is not interoperable and cannot be re-used in different health contexts. Difficulties arise when nurses share information with others involved in the delivery of nursing care. The aim of this study is to develop a nursing subset of patient problems that are prevalent in nursing practice, based on the SNOMED CT terminology to assist in the exchange and comparability of nursing information.MethodsExplorative qualitative focus groups were used to collect data. Mixed focus groups were defined. Additionally, a nursing researcher and a nursing expert with knowledge of terminologies and a terminologist participated in each focus group. The participants, who work in a range of practical contexts, discussed and reviewed patient problems from various perspectives.ResultsSixty-seven participants divided over seven focus groups selected and defined 119 patient problems. Each patient problem could be documented and coded with a current status or an at-risk status. Sixty-six percent of the patient problems included are covered by the definitions established by the International Classification of Nursing Practice, the reference terminology for nursing practice. For the remainder, definitions from either an official national guideline or a classification were used. Each of the 119 patient problems has a unique SNOMED CT identifier.ConclusionsTo support the interoperability of nursing information, a national nursing subset of patient problems based on a terminology (SNOMED CT) has been developed. Using unambiguously defined patient problems is beneficial for clinical nursing practice, because nurses can then compare and exchange information from different settings. A key strength of this study is that nurses were extensively involved in the development process. Further research is required to link or associate nursing patient problems to concepts from a nursing classification with the same meaning.

About a third of play groups observed in a part‐time and full‐time early childhood centre were of mixed gender and two‐thirds were same gender. Mixed gender groups were larger than same gender groups and kindergarten (part‐time) groups were larger than childcare (full‐time) centre groups. In the kindergarten, outdoor play was much more common and there was a significant difference in boys preferring to play outdoors, followed by mixed groups and then girls. In both centres boisterous play was more likely in boys’ groups than girls’ groups, with mixed groups more similar to boys’ groups in the predominance of boisterous play. Boys’ groups in both centres exclusively used male themes for pretend play, while girls mostly used female themes and an occasional male theme. Mixed gender groups used male themes almost as much as male groups, but rarely or never used female themes. There was more physical conflict and rejection in mixed groups, than boys’ groups and none in girls’ groups in the kindergarten. There ...

The aim of this study was to gain increased knowledge about nurses’ experiences of care transition of older patients from hospital to municipal health care, based on two research questions: How is nurses’ experience continuity during care transition of older patients from hospital to municipal health care? How would nurses describe an optimal care transition? Nurses have a pivotal role during care transitions of older patients. More knowledge about their experiences is necessary to develop favorable improvements for this important period in the older patient’s treatment and care. The study has a qualitative explorative design with follow-up focus group interviews. Nurses (N = 30) working in hospital (n = 16) and municipal (n = 14) health care were organized in five mixed focus groups during the period October-January 2014/2015. The focus groups met twice, answering the research questions following a previously circulated semi-structured interview guide. The interview analysis was inspired by content analysis. The analysis resulted in the themes “Administrative demands challenge terms for collaboration” and “Essentials for nursing determine optimal care transitions for older patients”. Administrative demands may prevent nurses’ professional dialogue and collaboration across health care levels. Older patients’ best interests should be ensured through a collaborative relationship between hospital and municipal nurses, to form continuous care across health care levels. Clinical practice should be aware of essentials for nursing, which could influence and facilitate a more individualized and continuous transition for older patients.

In this chapter, the same media materials analysed in Chap. 2—excluding the TV dramas—are used in an audience response study to investigate how the three religious groups and those with no religion react to the way the media represents these religions. Hall’s (1980) Encoding/Decoding model has been applied on participants’ comments in six separate focus group meetings with Muslims and Christians in London, Birmingham, and Manchester, a mixed focus group between Christians and Muslims in London, two focus groups with non-religious people in Manchester and Liverpool, separate interviews with two Jewish individuals in Liverpool, and 15 Jewish responses to an online questionnaire. Finally, a comparative analysis between the language used in online comments on newspaper articles and face-to-face conversations was conducted.