In this weeks seminar we mainly talked about our qualitative papers that we personally chose to read. We began by summarizing the main content and conclusions of the paper and by discussing the different qualitative methods that the authors used in their research. Our group mostly discussed the difference between focus groups, as was used in the paper I read, and interviews. We concluded that it might be easier for a person to "perform well", that is speak freely and really say what he/she want to say when interviewed individually. However in a focus group you might stumble upon other relevant topics to your research that appears when the participants inspire each other, or when someone has to defend a point that they are trying to make because someone else does not agree. I also added that I believe that a focus group will never be better than the moderators ability to influence the discussion. Stefan also spoke of this briefly at the end of the seminar, which for me was nice to hear.
In my paper the authors used their focus group in a different way than I was used to; they conducted their focus group meeting prior to defining their hypothesis and later based both their hypothesis and quantitative research questions on the results of the meeting. In my bachelor thesis I used a focus group when trying to make sense of the result of the questionnaires that were sent of before that. However it seems to be quite common to use a focus group before defining a hypothesis and other research questions as we partly talked about at the seminar. Our group also added a disadvantage of focus groups on the course home page about peoples intentions when deciding to participate in a focus group where you are payed in cash for your participation. We argued that it might lead to weaker results because some people only show up for the money. We thought that coffee and sugar would be better motivators.
Moving on we talked about the narrative method and the diary method which is getting more and more popular. The diary data gathering method seems to be easy to use for a researcher as the participants document what they experience and what they do while they do it. This of course means that the participants have to be very committed to the cause of the research, however this might be achieved by paying them or promising them an honorable mention for example. I presume that a challenge for the researcher is to design a diary template or some guidelines that are easy to follow for the participants in order to get as relevant information as possible. The narrative approach however is more a reflective one where the subjects are asked to write down what they have experienced afterwards. An advantage of this is of course that you have some time to reflect on what you did, however you might also forget some important or unimportant details.
Hi Carl, i see that you also talked a lot about focus groups and interviews on your seminar. I totally agree with your conclusions about it being easier to speak freely in interviews but that discussion with other might create more thoughts. What we discussed in our seminar around focus groups was that we believed it could be a good complement to other methods. None of us wanted to use it as a standalone method. We also discussed about the role of the moderator being very important, for example to get everyone to speak.
SvaraRaderaThe narrative and diary methods seems to be very interesting but i have no experience of them. They seem to be very time efficient methods, with the participating subjects doing much of the work themselves without interuption by the researcher. Do you agree?
Hej Filip,
RaderaIn my seminar group we discussed the narrative methodology. As my group wrote on the course wiki, the general idea is to see a story as a source of information for a specific research. Indeed, I find it really interesting and useful because the researchers can get valuable information based on the participants' narratives. Narratizing about their experiences and thoughts allows the participants to express themselves in ways that are meaningful to them.
But I wouldn't necessarily characterize the diary and the narratives as time efficient methodologies. On the contrary, I think that keeping a diary is a time consuming method. Additionally, I would characterize the analysis of the collected information in both these methodologies as time consuming. It might also be difficult and the researchers might need to spend a lot of time to select only the relevant information according to their research questions.
Hej Carl!
SvaraRaderaIt was nice to read your reflection because in my seminar group we did not discuss that much about focus groups. You discuss about the inspiration that you can get by other participants in focus groups and that it might be easier for a person to speak freely in individual interviews. I believe that other factors play an important role in a participant speaking freely, e.g. the personality of the participant, the dynamics of the focus group and as you discussed the moderators ability to moderate the discussion. I would like to note that I agree with your comment about the moderator playing an important role when it comes to focus groups.
Hi!
RaderaYes, of course the personality of the participants and the dynamics between them in general play an important role when it comes to the potential vividness of the discussion. However I mean that this is all secondary to the moderators ability to influence others and to what extent he/she has prepared for the focus group meeting by, for example, setting a time limit for each discussion/question. It might also be good to have some kind of strategy for how you will move the discussion along if it stagnates.
I like the idea of having a focus group before you clearly define your hypothesis (i.e. for a bachelor thesis). You could probably see it as a pre-study to see if you "pre-hypothesis" might be good to use or not. Personally I interviewed people with knowledge in the field as a pre-study, but in retrospect I believe that a focus group where you invite several people and discuss can be quite effective too.
SvaraRaderaOf course there are pros and cons in choosing either method and I think it depends on which type of study you do. If the questions is based on personal experience and highly subjective to ones own personal opinion I believe interviews to be better since the individual don't have to feel judged.
Hi Carl! I agree that it is much more easier to speak freely in interviews. But the focus group allows you to build the widest possible range of views on relevant issues. Just it should be remembered about imitations of this method. You have to understand that the results of research by focus groups are not considered as representative. The second drawback - the result of study largely depends on the moderator, his experience and skills.
SvaraRaderaI think the diary method is particularly relevant for our field of study, in particular we could easily conduct a diary research based on our friends behavior on social media.
SvaraRaderaFor example constantly monitoring different target groups timelines on Facebook we could draw conclusions on the usual tasks performed by different categories of users.