Research Methodology, Focus Groups - Essay Example

Research Methodology: Focus groups and Section # of There Exist many differing modes of research in the world of today. As, the world is now evolving into more of a global village. Research is becoming a vital part of businesses, products, services etc. The use of Primary Data, secondary data, conducting of interviews, surveys, and distribution of questionnaires are some of the many modes or methodologies of research. Any research process consists of the following stages: the collection of preliminary data through analysis of primary or secondary data. Which ever is readily available. A hypothesis. A sample Size. And then consequently, research being conducted either by surveys, questionnaires, interviews or focus groups. Focus Group and its uses 'Typically focus groups are used as a means of testing concepts new products and messages. A focus group is qualitative research which means that you do not obtain results with percentages, statistical testing or tables .instead this methodology is less structured than surveys or other quantitative research and tends to be more exploratory as well. Rather than providing quantifiable responses to a specific question obtained from a large sampling of the population, focus group participants provide a flow of input and interaction related to the topic or group of topics that the group is centered around. While they appear to be less formal than a survey, focus groups do provide an important source of information for making business decisions. It is important how ever to ensure that persons using the results of such a qualitative study understand how to correctly interpret the resulting information'. 1 'Who Uses Focus Groups Political pollsters use focus groups to ask potential voters about their views of political candidates or issues. Organizational researchers use focus groups to learn how employees and managers feel about the issues confronting them in the workplace. Marketing firms use focus groups to determine how customers respond to new products. Public agencies find focus groups an important tool in improving customer service. Survey designers use focus groups to pretest their ideas and to interpret the quantitative information obtained from interviewing. How Are People in Focus Groups Selected Unlike surveys in which a representative sample of the population is selected to study, a planned sample is chosen for focus groups. The composition of a focus group is usually based on the homogeneity or similarity of the group members. Bringing people with common interests or experiences together makes it easier for them to carry on a productive discussion. Often a research project will use different groups to get differing views. For example, an organization is planning a major restructuring. It would be desirable to have three separate focus groups - union members, nonunion employees, and managers. Each of these groups would represent a potentially different perspective on the changes facing the organization. Imagine the potential problems in bringing together union members and management. Neither would feel free to speak spontaneously and, depending on the anxiety level, the discussion might possibly spiral out of control. Demographic characteristics are another way to determine focus group composition: A political candidate might consider holding separate focus groups with both men and women or younger and older voters. A company testing a new product might conduct focus groups in different geographical regions. Organizational decision makers might find it useful to have separate focus groups for those who favor and those who oppose a particular issue. One caution-remember that with a focus group, it is not possible to compare the results from different groups in a strict quantitative sense, because they lack representative ness. Each group may be characterized as augmenting the information of the others - in an effort to look for as many different explanations or interpretations as possible. Who Conducts Focus Groups Generally, focus groups are conducted by trained "moderators," who are skilled in maintaining good group dynamics. Depending on the purpose of the focus group, the moderator may also be an expert in a given topic area. The moderator's basic job is to keep the group "focused." He or she has the goal of helping the group generate a lively and productive discussion of the topic at hand. It is imperative that a moderator understand the underlying objectives of the study. Much of the data quality in focus groups depends on how effectively the moderator asks the questions and how well this person keeps the discussion targeted on the research objectives. Making this work requires the ability to tailor one's moderating style to different types of groups. Going back to the previous example, there may need to be differences in both the questions and the approach to moderating for the three groups of union members, non-union members, and managers. What Types of Questions Should Be Asked in a Focus Group Questions should be open-ended so that there are many possible replies. Short-answer questions, such as those that can be answered "Yes" or "No," should be avoided. It is also important to avoid leading questions that suggest the moderator's opinion or the answer that he or she hopes to receive. Questions also should be clearly formulated and easily understood neutral so that the formulation does not influence the answer carefully sequenced with easier, general questions preceding more difficult ones ordered so that less intimate topics precede the more personal questions. Focus-group questions are not a form of group interviewing (i.e., scooping up 10 interviews at one time). "Serial interviewing" is not being done either - in which the moderator asks a question and just passes from person to person getting an answer. Ideally, the moderator places the question (or issue or topic) before the group. They then discuss it among themselves - talking to each other, asking each other questions about what they hear, and generally reacting to each other. It is a totally different dynamic from an interview. What Is the Ideal Size of a Focus Group The ideal size for a focus group is generally between 6 and 12 people. This size group encourages participants to contribute their ideas. Too-small groups are easily dominated by one or two members, or they may fall flat if too few people have anything to contribute. (Another problem is that the session may lapse into serial interviewing and lack energy.) Too large a group lacks cohesion and may break up into side conversations, or people may become frustrated if they have to wait their turn to respond or to get involved. If people are brought together because they have common experiences to discuss, you run the risk of not getting much new information when there too few people in the group. You bring numerous people together in the hope that they will bounce ideas off each other so that a "bigger, more expansive" answer or explanation emerges. However, there is a point of diminishing returns where too many participants add nothing new. What Is a Typical Focus Group Like Prior to the focus group, participants are usually recruited by telephone. Care needs to be taken to ensure that people who know each other are not recruited into the same sessions. People are generally more open and less guarded with people they don't know and don't have to worry about ever seeing again. Absolutely never put people together who are in some chain of command (e.g., supervisors with employees, teachers with students, etc.). When being recruited, potential participants receive a brief description of what the group will be about, as well as assurances that their participation is entirely voluntary and that their confidentiality will be protected. Focus group participants are often paid $25 to $50 for reimbursement of their time and travel expenses. In addition, a comfortable, relaxed atmosphere is often created by providing light refreshments or even a meal. At the focus group itself, the moderator begins with an introduction that should include the following explaining the purposes of the focus group , laying down some basic ground rules to encourage everyone to participate in the discussion reassuring the participants about the voluntary and confidential nature of their participation introducing the moderator and any co moderators and explaining how and why these group members were invited to participate (e.g., what they may have in common) stating the purpose of note taking and recording. The moderator typically begins the discussion with an ice-breaker giving participants the chance to introduce themselves to the group. Once introductions are complete, the moderator guides the discussion, using an outline of questions, to explore various aspects of the research topic. As the group responds to each question, the moderator can probe for more information and ask follow-up questions to elicit more discussion. Focus-group sessions are frequently scheduled to last two hours, with the discussion taking 90 minutes. Once all of the questions have been asked, the moderator may conclude by giving a summary of the major points in the discussion and asking the group for feedback. Or, the moderator may have each participant think back over what was discussed and then have each one choose what he or she felt was the most important point. Another good way of concluding is to ask participants if there are any questions about a particular topic that were not asked but should have been.'2 'Advantages of Focus Groups Among the advantages of focus groups are the following A wide range of information can be gathered in a relatively short time span. The moderator can explore related but unanticipated topics as they arise in the discussion. Focus groups do not require complex sampling techniques. Disadvantages of Focus Groups There is also a set of accompanying disadvantages: The sample is neither randomly selected nor representative of a target population, so the results cannot be generalized or treated statistically. The quality of the data is influenced by the skills and motivation of the moderator. Focus groups lend themselves to a different kind of analysis than would be carried out with survey results. In surveys, the emphasis is on counting and measuring versus coding/ classifying/ sorting, in a focus group. A focus group analysis is truly qualitative. You use the actual words and behaviors of the participants to answer your questions, rather than counting response options.'3 Conclusion 'Focus groups are a somewhat informal technique that can help you assess user needs and feelings both before interface design and long after implementation. In a focus group, you bring together from six to nine users to discuss issues and concerns about the features of a user interface. The group typically lasts about two hours and is run by a moderator who maintains the group's focus. Focus groups often bring out users' spontaneous reactions and ideas and let you observe some group dynamics and organizational issues. You can also ask people to discuss how they perform activities that span many days or weeks: something that is expensive to observe directly. However, they can only assess what customers say they do and not the way customers actually operate the product. Since there are often major differences between what people say and what they do, direct observation of one user at a time always needs to be done to supplement focus groups. Narrow View Although focus groups can be a powerful tool in system development, you shouldn't use them as your only source of usability data. People with an advertising or marketing background often rely solely on focus groups to expose products to users. Thus, because advertising and marketing people frequently contribute to web site development, focus groups are often used to evaluate Web projects. Unfortunately, focus groups are a rather poor method for evaluating interface usability. It is thus dangerous to rely on them as your only method in a Web design project. Traditional market research targets products for which usability is a minor concern. When judging, for example, what proposals a politician should support, how sweet a chocolate bar should be, or whether to show a new Mercedes braking in snow or in rain, you need only expose a group of consumers to different versions of the proposal, candy, or commercial, ask them which they prefer, and listen to their reasons as to why they prefer one or the other. Software products, websites, and other interactive systems also need to be liked by customers, but no amount of subjective preference will make a product viable if users can't use it. To assess whether users can operate an interactive system, the only proper methodology is to sit users down, one at a time, and have them use the system. Because focus groups are groups, individuals rarely get the chance to explore the system on their own; instead, the moderator usually provides a product demo as the basis for discussion. Watching a demo is fundamentally different from actually using the product: There is never a question as to what to do next and you don't have to ponder the meaning of numerous screen options. Consider, for example, the problem of windowing versus scrolling as methods for changing the information visible on the screen. The windowing principle says that to see the information in the beginning of a file, the user moves the window to the top of the file. Scrolling, on the contrary, says that to see the beginning of the file, you scroll down the screen until the desired content becomes visible. In other words, the command to get to the top of the file should be called UP (or shown as an upward-pointing arrow) if windowing is preferred, whereas the same command should be called DOWN if scrolling is preferred. When they actually carry out the task, most users perform better in the windowing model (which is therefore used in most current GUI standards). But if you give a demo of moving text files to people new to computers, many of them will say that the scrolling model characterizes what they are seeing (since they see the text move down to get to the beginning). If GUIs had been designed by focus groups, we would have ended up with a suboptimal command. Benefits In interactive systems development, the proper role of focus groups is not to assess interaction styles or design usability, but to discover what users want from the system. For example, in developing Sun's new online documentation system, we ran a focus group with system administrators to discover their thoughts and preferences on issues like distributing and replicating huge documentation files across multiple servers, and whether or not they needed faster access to local copies of the documentation on specific client machines. These questions would never emerge in a usability test (although we did run usability studies to see if administrators could operate the system). We could have investigated the needs of system administrators in other ways -- including field trips to customer locations -- but it was more efficient to have a focus group discuss the problems in a single session. Getting Focused For participants, the focus-group session should feel free-flowing and relatively unstructured, but in reality, the moderator must follow a preplanned script of specific issues and set goals for the type of information to be gathered. During the group session, the moderator has the difficult job of keeping the discussion on track without inhibiting the flow of ideas and comments. The moderator also must ensure that all group members contribute to the discussion and must avoid letting one participant's opinions dominate. After the session, data analysis can be as simple as having the moderator write a short report summing up the prevailing mood in the group, illustrated with a few colorful quotes. You can also do more detailed analyses, but the unstructured nature of the groups make this difficult and time-consuming. Focus groups require several representative users. Because you need a flowing discussion and various perspectives, the initial focus group should have at least six users. Typically, you should run more than one focus group, because the outcome of any single session may not be representative and discussions can get sidetracked. Other Issues As with any method based on asking users what they want -- instead of measuring or observing how they actually use things -- focus groups can produce inaccurate data because users may think they want one thing when they need another. You can minimize this problem by exposing users to the most concrete examples of the technology being discussed as possible. For example, Irene Greif ran focus groups to assess a version management facility for Lotus 1-2-3. The new features were presented to the focus group as a way to let multiple users compare alternative views of a spreadsheet across computer networks Initially, group members were skeptical about these ideas and expressed distrust in networks and nervousness about what other people would do to their spreadsheets. After seeing a prototype and scenarios of version management in use, participants moved from skepticism to enthusiasm. A cheap way to approximate a focus group is to rely on email, Web sites, or Usenet newsgroups. For example, Yia Yang started a project on undo facilities by posting on the British academic network, asking users what undo facilities they used and how they liked them. Posting questions to a newsgroup with an interest in the issues can generate considerable discussion. A disadvantage is that online discussions are difficult (or impossible) to keep confidential unless they take place on an intranet, behind a firewall. Another disadvantage to this approach is bias. Internet users tend to be people with above-average interest in computers, and participants in online discussion groups tend to have above-average involvement in the group's topic. Although online forum discussions are unlikely to reflect the average user's concerns, they can be a good way of getting in touch with "power users." These users have needs that will sometimes surface later for the average user. Thus, addressing the power users' needs may be a way of getting a head start on future usability work'. 3 Bibliography By Holly Edmunds, the Focus Group Research Handbook Published 2000 McGraw-Hill Professional. 1. ASA Series, Section on Survey Research Methods American Statistical Association Produced by Section on Survey Research Methods, American Statistical Association 1429 Duke Street Alexandria, VA 22314-3415 USA, 1998. 2. by Jakob Nielsen , 1997 , The Use and Misuse of Focus Groups Read More