Exam 9: Focus Groups

During the sampling process for focus group research, you will want to confer with experts when deciding on how many groups to conduct. An expert ______.

You are conducting research to generate new ideas about how to reduce rates of reoffending among drug offenders. While sampling for this research, you aim to include eight people from each the three ethnicities with the highest rates of reoffending: Whites, African Americans, and Latinx. Once each focus group has eight people, you stop accepting participants for that group. Which sampling method are you using in this scenario?

Which type of notes would you take during your focus group, and why would that style of notetaking be the most appropriate?

How many focus groups would you conduct? Why?

You are conducting focus group research with employees at a mid-sized company to explore the ways that they might imagine restructuring the workplace to improve work-life balance. Your literature review has suggested that the answers to this question may vary greatly between men and women and between the upper and lower wage earners (between management and sales, for example). What factors should you consider during sampling? How many groups would you decide to conduct and what would be the composition of those groups? Explain your decisions.

Why is it important in focus group research to build rapport not only between the moderator and participants but between the participants as well?