Qualitative Research: Focus Groups

Qualitative Research is a type of research that observes how people act and why people perceive things the way they do. It helps to determine why people react a certain way to things such as the media and the message its sending.  It is the quality of the results; not the quantity (numbers and statistics) that is used as actual data.

The most common type of qualitative method used is focus groups. They are special type of interview, where a relatively small group of people meets to be interviewed by an interviewer. Having a focus group is a very respectable way to gain both people’s insights and thoughts. This kind of gathering is used to determine the both opinions and experiences of a variety of people with a particular product or service. During focus groups, the interviewer encourages discuss among the participants. The interviewer then looks for common trends and opinions in reference to the various answers they receive from the respondents.

Focus groups are used to generate new ideas for products, campaigns, and themes. They generally don’t cost much to hold; however there is usually a money incentive used to entice people to join the focus group. The interviewer gets their answers automatically so they get their results quickly and easily without searching.  Since the group of respondents is usually small, typically 6-12 people, their thoughts and opinions can only be common to this particular group of people. The result cannot be used to describe a population as a whole or to generalize something about a certain niche population.

There are some cons to using a focus group as qualitative research. Since focus groups are on a voluntary basis, it could pose a problem because if an incentive is provided, the interviewer must distinguish if respondents are there to take the interview seriously; and provide thoughtful feedback. Or if they are just attending in order to get their money incentive and don’t provide the interviewer with legitimate information. Otherwise, their information will be discounted due to lack of detail or consideration. Focus groups cannot be attributed to a larger scaled population because the number of people used in focus groups is too small. This kind of interview is not always legitimate and unbiased; since respondents could potentially change their responses due to the fact that other in the room could alter or influence your opinion.