I’m sticking week 2 in the title even though it’s actually week 3 of #SOCRMx but I intend to be caught up and have my ‘homework’ done before week 3 ends.
The focus group activity is “to review the following case study and reflect on the use of the focus group method.” ‘Review and reflect‘ I can do as long as the expectation isn’t for a detailed critique – that’s a current practice area for me!
Case: McKenzie, L & Baldassar, L 2017. ‘Studying internationalization on campus: lessons from an undergraduate qualitative research project’ [online]. SAGE Research Methods Cases.
- How have focus groups been integrated with other methods in this research?
The research project was designed to be qualitative using only interview and focus group methods. As such, there was no integration with other eg. quantitative methods, however, it is noted that the students involved in the project were 4th year honours undergraduate students with for the most part, little experience of research methods. The coursework leading to the research itself involved readings and unit study but appeared to focus on qualitative methods particularly, semi-structured interviews and focus groups methods only. It is not evident how in-depth the coursework was but the evidence suggests that it was insufficient in preparing the students for their empirical research studies.
- What difficulties did students encounter in the design of focus group questions?
Staying with the ‘integration’ element, students encountered difficulties with their focus group question for a number of reasons. Firstly, between the development of the topic and research question, and the list of questions, an information sheet was prepared, in draft format with feedback from the teaching team and then a revised sheet. There is no detail as to what was included in this information sheet but from the resulting issues with the questions it would appear that it did not include a data requirements table that would have acted as a check list of variables for the final list of questions. Secondly, the issue of time constraints appears to be a factor that contributed to the quality of the focus group sessions since in many cases, the content was leveraged from the interview questions. Interviews and focus groups are two very different qualitative techniques with the purpose of focus groups to help the researcher understand the shared perspective of the group (including ‘folk models’) rather than an individual perspective. Thus, reusing the interview questions would unlikely be successful.
- What kind of insights did the focus group generate, and how were these different from those derived from other methods used?
A key challenge in identifying insights from one method over another lies in the fact that the themes from the research appear to be combined. Taking each of these in turn, consideration should be given to the more likely source, whether individual interview or focus group. Theme #1 referred to ‘loneliness and confusion regarding cultural and social norms‘. Is this more likely to be derived from an individual or a group? Similarly, for theme #2 ‘contradictions between the rhetoric and realities of international and study abroad student programs.’ The point to be made is that these themes or insights could have been generated by either or both method of inquiry.
- What are identified as some of the key findings from focus group questions?
Consideration should be given to whether or not these are in fact ‘key findings’ given the lack of clarity as to the qualitative source of the data per the previous question. In addition to the two key findings or themes presented above, Theme #3 refers to ‘a “bubble” effect, whereby international and study abroad students had limited opportunities to engage with their domestic counterparts‘. As key findings, there really is very little information provided that could be built upon without considerable rework.
- What kind of issues did the students face with recruiting focus group participants?
In the discussion surrounding time constraints, reference is made to the undertaking of ‘guided research’ by the students in a number of areas including ‘recruiting participants’. This in itself is potentially a source of the issues faced by the students across many of these areas. What is meant by ‘guided research’? It is a fair expectation that the guidance in question would come from an experienced supervisor or teacher perhaps. This appears to be the case in this scenario, however, the teachers themselves refer to resource constraints likely resulting in not being able to give sufficient time at an individual level or in small groups.
The issues specific to the recruitment of participants for the focus groups the reliance on students’ personal contacts and those of ‘better connected peers’ was certainly a factor. This is certainly another example of lack of preparedness and expectation on behalf of the students.
To conclude, this post is not intended to be a critique of the case, rather a personal response to the questions posed.
Sandra Flynn 