focus groups as qualitative research david l. morgan

Focus Groups as Qualitative Research

Series: Qualitative Research Methods

Focus Group Research | Qualitative Research in Business & Management

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From the First Edition:

"Continues the high quality of previously published volumes in the Sage series on qualitative research methods. . . . Useful and instructive. . . . David L. Morgan deals with a number of practical issues concerning the conduct of focus groups, such as the degree of moderator involvement and group size. . . . Provides ample illustrations . . . and thought-provoking advice for researchers and students."

--Contemporary Sociology

"David L. Morgan's book is unique among current offerings on focus groups because it is directed at academic users of focus groups rather than practitioners. His account is also unique in its critical attitude toward contemporary market research applications of focus groups. . . . The book succeeds best at providing fuel for scholarly debates about what group interviews can and cannot contribute to research."

--Journal of Marketing Research

"Provides the reader with a very clear and practical overview of the focus group as a method for field research. . . . Well-written and informative. . . . Providing the history and methodological rationale for the method. . . . Attests to the benefits or strengths of focus group research on the basis of personal opinion and testimonial evidence."

--Personnel Psychology

Only a decade ago, focus groups were virtually unknown to social scientists. Now their use in academic as well as outside settings is vast and ever growing. David L. Morgan has extensively revised and updated his best-selling Focus Groups as Qualitative Research , providing an excellent guide for researchers in every discipline. He begins his comprehensive revision with an updated introduction that offers a discussion of current social science approaches to focus groups. Expanded coverage on the comparison of focus groups to individual interviews follows, as well as more on the strengths and weaknesses of focus groups (Chapter 2). Chapter 3's section on self-contained focus groups has also been expanded to reflect the increased range of research being done in this area. The next chapter has been thoroughly reorganized both to provide an overview of what a typical set of groups looks like as well as new insights on research design. Similarly, Chapters 5 and 6 have been reorganized and broadened to include examples from social scientists who have established their own practices and methodological research on focus groups. This best-selling research guide concludes with future directions and references that take into account the explosive growth in focus groups as a research tool for all social scientists.

Reflecting the many changes that have occurred in the study of focus groups over the years, Focus Groups as Qualitative Research , Second Edition is for qualitative researchers in every academic discipline as well as those in nonacademic settings.

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Focus Groups as Qualitative Research

• David L. Morgan - Portland State University, USA
• Description

a fantastic guide for anyone who is using focus groups as a research method. it covers all the topics from technical set up of the focus group to reflective questions that may arise while using this particular methods.

This text provides some excellent advice and structure for focus group methodology and analysis.

I will recommend this book at supplemental reading for my student writing BA projects and MA theses.

The book was well-written, easy to understand, and methodical in its approach. It is recommended for anyone planning a focus group who has no or limited previous experience.

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Focus groups as qualitative research

Copyright €> 1997 by Sage Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any informa- tion storage and retrieval system, without ...

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The paper critically examines the key components involved in the implementation of focus groups as a research technique. To accomplish this, the paper provides a nuanced and multifaceted insight into the theoretical underpinnings of focus group with a view to enabling a clear comprehension of the technique. It then delves into the operational context and an array of diverse phases involved in organizing and conducting the focus groups, having become an established and accepted part of the range of methodological tools available to academic researchers. Part three, the last, deals with the strengths, the weaknesses as well as the suggested solutions to mitigate the limitations associated with the usage of the instrument.

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Focus groups as qualitative research / David L. Morgan

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• Introduction Focus Groups as Qualitative Method The Uses of Focus Groups Planning and Research Design for Focus Groups Conducting and Analyzing Focus Groups Additional Possibilities Conclusions.
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Annual Review of Sociology

Volume 22, 1996, review article, focus groups.

• David L. Morgan 1
• View Affiliations Hide Affiliations Affiliations: Institute on Aging, School of Urban and Public Affairs, Portland State University, Portland, Oregon 97201
• Vol. 22:129-152 (Volume publication date August 1996) https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.soc.22.1.129
• © Annual Reviews

Over the past decade, focus groups and group interviews have reemerged as a popular technique for gathering qualitative data, both among sociologists and across a wide range of academic and applied research areas. Focus groups are currently used as both a self-contained method and in combination with surveys and other research methods, most notably individual, in-depth interviews. Comparisons between focus groups and both surveys and individual interviews help to show the specific advantages and disadvantages of group interviews, concentrating on the role of the group in producing interaction and the role of the moderator in guiding this interaction. The advantages of focus groups can be maximized through careful attention to research design issues at both the project and the group level. Important future directions include: the development of standards for reporting focus group research, more methodological research on focus groups, more attention to data analysis issues, and more engagement with the concerns of the research participants.

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Most cited most cited rss feed, birds of a feather: homophily in social networks, social capital: its origins and applications in modern sociology, conceptualizing stigma, framing processes and social movements: an overview and assessment, organizational learning, the study of boundaries in the social sciences, assessing “neighborhood effects”: social processes and new directions in research, social exchange theory, culture and cognition.

Publication Date: 01 Aug 1996

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Focus Groups

• First Online: 02 January 2023

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• Janet Mola Okoko 4  

Part of the book series: Springer Texts in Education ((SPTE))

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Focus group, as a methodology in the social sciences, has been traced to the study done by Paul Lazarsfeld and Robert Merton in the early 1940’s on the effects of media on people’s attitude towards World War II (Liamputtong in Focus group methodology: Principles and practice. Sage Publications, 2011) (Merton and Kendall in Am J of Socio 51(6):541–5571946). Before that, Emory Bogardus described group interviews in a study that was aimed at developing a social distance scale (Wark and Galliher in Am Sociologist, 38(4), 383–395, 2007). The element of having group discussions and group-based research became more popular in market research before other social science researchers started paying attention to it. The term focus groups was mainly used to define the social images of commercial products and judge the reactions to, opinions about, and attitudes toward a product, but is now a generic method that can be applicable to multiple fields of behaviour and human experience (Merton, 1987 ). It is now used to study concepts, programs, services, and institutions (Gil and Granado in Eval Rev 19(1):84–10 1995).

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Talking to People IV: Focus Groups

Setting the Scene for a New Era of Focus Group Research

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Breen, R. L. (2006). A practical guide to focus-group research, Journal of Geography in Higher Education , 30 (3), 463–475. https://doi.org/10.1080/03098260600927575

Calderón, J. L., Baker, R. S., & Wolf, K. E. (2000). Focus groups: A qualitative method complementing quantitative research for studying culturally diverse groups. Education for Health (Abingdon, England), 13 (1), 91–95. https://doi.org/10.1080/135762800110628

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Cohen, L., Manion, L., & Morrison, K. (2018). Research methods in education (8th ed.). Routledge.

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Creswell, J., & Guetterman, T. (2019). Educational research: Planning, conducting and evaluating qualitative and quantitative research . Pearson.

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Cyr, J. (2015). The pitfalls and promise of focus groups as a data collection method. Sociological Methods and Research, 45 (2), 231–259. https://doi.org/10.1177/0049124115570065

Gil, F. J., & Granado, A. C. (1995). Using focus groups in educational research: Exploring teachers’ perspectives on educational change. Evaluation Review, 19 (1), 84–101. https://doi.org/10.1177/0193841X9501900104

Hopkins, P. E. (2007). Thinking critically and creatively about focus groups. Area, 39 (4), 528–535. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-4762.2007.00766.x

Krueger, R. A., & Casey, M. A. (2009). Focus groups: A practical guide for applied research (4th ed.). Sage Publications.

Liamputtong, P. (2011). Focus group methodology: Principles and practice . Sage Publications. https://doi.org/ https://doi.org/10.4135/9781473957657

MacDougall, C., & Baum, F. (1997). The Devil’s Advocate: A strategy to avoid groupthink and stimulate discussion in focus groups. Qualitative Health Research, 7 (4), 532–541. https://doi.org/10.1177/104973239700700407

Merton, R. K., & Kendall, P. L. (1946). The focused interview. American Journal of Sociology, 51 (6), 541–557. https://doi.org/10.1086/219886

Merton, R. K. (1987). The focussed interview and focus groups: Continuities and discontinuities. The Public Opinion Quarterly, 51 (4), 550–566. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2749327

Morgan, D. L. (1998). The focus group guidebook . Sage Publications.

Nyumba, T., Wilson, K., Derrick, C., & Mukherjee, N. (2018). The use of focus group discussion methodology: Insights from two decades of application in conservation. Methods of Ecology and Evolution, 9 (9), 20–23. https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.12860

Ravitch, S. M., & Carl, N. M. (2016). Qualitative research: Bridging the conceptual, theoretical and methodological . Sage Publication

Tadajewski, M. (2016). Focus groups: History, epistemology and non-individualistic consumer research. Consumption Markets & Culture, 19 (4), 319–345. https://doi.org/10.1080/10253866.2015.1104038

Wark, C., & Galliher, J. (2007). Emory Bogardus and the origins of the social distance scale. The American Sociologist, 38 (4), 383–395. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-007-9023-9

Additional Readings

Barbour, R. (2018). Doing focus groups (2nd ed.) Sage Publications.

Belzile, J., & Oberg, G. (2012). Where to begin? Grappling with how to use participant interaction in focus group design. Qualitative Research, 12 (4), 459–472.

Jakobsen, H. (2012). Focus groups and methodological rigour outside the minority world: Making the method work to its strengths in Tanzania. Qualitative Research, 12 (2), 111–130.

Krueger, R.A. (1998). Moderating focus groups . Sage Publications.

Onwuegbuzie, A. J., Dickinson, W. B., Leech, N. L., & Zoran, A. G. (2009). A Qualitative framework for collecting and analyzing data in focus group research. International Journal of Qualitative Methods , 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1177/160940690900800301

Sim, J., & Waterfield, J. (2019). Focus group methodology: Some ethical challenges. Quality and Quantity, 53 , 3003–3022. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-019-00914-5

Online Resources

1. How to focus groups work (4 min): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TwgVQIZPsw

2. Conducting a focus group (5 ½ minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Auf9pkuCc8k

3. Preparing for a focus group (5 min): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSwTvkTsOvI

4. How to run a successful focus group (12 min): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjQtu6yeC1E

5. The focus group method (8 min): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU92Zryjf-0

6. Moderating focus groups (30 min): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjHZsEcSqwo

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University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, Canada

Janet Mola Okoko

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Department of Educational Administration, College of Education, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, Canada

Scott Tunison

Department of Educational Administration, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, Canada

Keith D. Walker

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Okoko, J.M. (2023). Focus Groups. In: Okoko, J.M., Tunison, S., Walker, K.D. (eds) Varieties of Qualitative Research Methods. Springer Texts in Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04394-9_31

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Focus Groups as Qualitative Research (Qualitative Research Methods) 1st Edition

• ISBN-10 080393209X
• ISBN-13 978-0803932098
• Edition 1st
• Publisher SAGE Publications, Inc
• Publication date September 1, 1988
• Part of series Qualitative Research Methods
• Language English
• Print length 88 pages
• See all details

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About the author.

David L. Morgan is a professor emeritus in Department of Sociology at Portland State University. He is a sociological social psychologist, who is widely known for his work on focus groups, including his book, Focus Groups as Qualitative Research , and as coauthor of The Focus Group Kit . In addition, he has worked extensively on mixed methods, including a book for SAGE, Integrating Qualitative and Quantitative Methods . Most recently, he has published Essentials of Dyadic Interviewing for Routledge, and A New Era in Focus Group Research , co-edited, with Rosaline Barbour, for Palgrave.

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ SAGE Publications, Inc; 1st edition (September 1, 1988)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 88 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 080393209X
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0803932098
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 4.2 ounces

About the author

David l. morgan.

My primary interest is in social science research design, including focus groups and mixed methods research.

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