The Nature and Purpose Of Focus Groups*

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Focus groups constitute a form of scientific social, policy, and public opinion research. As structured group interviews that proceed according to careful research design and attention to the principles of group dynamics, focus groups should be distinguished from “discussion groups,” “problem-solving groups,” “buzz groups,” or “brainstorming groups.” They are not designed to help a group reach consensus or to make decisions, but rather to elicit the full range of ideas, attitudes, experiences, and opinions held by a selected sample of respondents on a defined topic.

Through focused interaction on questions of interest to the client, respondents from target groups can provide a wealth of qualitative data not available from surveys alone. Participants are chosen because of background characteristics of special interest to the client and are given the opportunity in a guided interaction setting to discuss and debate issues surrounding a program, policy, service, plan, or product. Focus groups normally range from one to two hours in duration. The moderator can pursue ideas that are generated during the discussion. Motivations, feelings, and values behind reactions to products can be elicited through probing, restating questions, and eliciting opinion from others in the group.

Advantages of the focus group are that the client is brought closer to the target groups through observation of the session and/or through listening to tapes; participants stimulate each other in an exchange of ideas that may not emerge in individual interviews or surveys; ideas can be linked to areas of particular interest to the client for in-depth exploration.

Through focus groups we learn what characteristics are most salient to participants, the level and nature of emotional value associated with those characteristics, and how participants differ on key issues. Focus group interviews are useful for identifying how target groups think and feel about the topic under discussion.

The complexity of insights generated by focus groups extends far beyond the number of people involved or the cost of conducting them.

Because of the small numbers involved, however, the participants cannot be expected to be thoroughly representative in a statistical sense of the target populations from which they are drawn, and findings cannot reliably be generalized beyond their number.