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 instead of the researcher asking each person to respond to a question in turn, people are encouraged to talk to one another: asking questions, exchanging anecdotes and commenting on each other's experiences and points of view.1 The method is particularly useful for exploring people's knowledge and experiences and can be used to examine not only what people think but how they think and why they think that way.

Focus groups were originally used within communication studies to explore the effects of films and television programmes,2 and are a popular method for assessing health education messages and examining public understandings of illness and of health behaviours.3 4 5 6 7 They are widely used to examine people's experiences of disease and of health services.8 9 and are an effective technique for exploring the attitudes and needs of staff.10 11

The idea behind the focus group method is that group processes can help people to explore and …