Education and debate

Qualitative Research: Introducing focus groups

^a Glasgow University Media Group, Department of Sociology, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8LF

This paper introduces focus group methodology, gives advice on group composition, running the groups, and analysing the results. Focus groups have advantages for researchers in the field of health and medicine: they do not discriminate against people who cannot read or write and they can encourage participation from people reluctant to be interviewed on their own or who feel they have nothing to say.

This is the fifth in a series of seven articles describing non-quantitative techniques and showing their value in health research

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Rationale and uses of focus groups

Focus groups are a form of group interview that capitalises on communication between research participants in order to generate data. Although group interviews are often used simply as a quick and convenient way to collect data from several people simultaneously, focus groups explicitly use group interaction as part of the method. This means that . . . [Full text of this article]

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