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Appendix C: Background to Focus Group Work
Focus group research involves organised discussion with a selected group of individuals to gain information about their views and experiences of a specified topic or topics. Kitzinger & Barbour (2001) identify a number of strengths of this technique for qualitative research. By providing a group context, and allowing participants to direct the flow of conversation amongst themselves, the active involvement of the interviewer/researcher (and therefore the influence of their preconceptions) can be minimised. As a discussion, the focus group also allows us to see more of how individual perspectives might interact in an everyday context, making participants more likely to rationalise the statements they make to each other. This technique is particularly suitable for gaining access to multiple views on the same subject; in this research it was seen as highly appropriate for gathering a broad range of opinions from teachers in a range of occupations. Since participants follow up each other's contributions, the discussion follows their line of thought rather than simply responding to the interviewer's questions one at a time, allowing them to qualify others' views and offer alternative accounts.
Each group was moderated by a member or members of the research team, who made clear that all material would be anonymised. All group members agreed to the discussion being taped. In keeping with Kitzinger & Barbour's methodology (2001) the agenda and specific topics covered were to be at the discretion of participants as far as possible; interview materials were therefore kept to a minimum. A schedule of topics for discussion at the focus groups was derived by the researchers from objectives identified for this study, and a range of relevant non-leading questions were drafted ( see Appendix B). These were to be utilised as prompts to stimulate discussion only if the moderator felt the discussion was stalling or becoming sidetracked. All interviews took place in the immediate after-school period; each group lasted for between an hour and 90 minutes, and discussion was tape-recorded.
The tapes were subsequently transcribed using minimal transcription conventions and analysed using inductive thematic analysis. For this, the researchers each coded a section of the data through repeated reading following the guidelines for focus groups offered by Frankland & Bloor (2001), whereby each coder identified and labelled emergent themes. These fine-grain codes were then compared and discussed, in particular examining divergences in themes between researchers or groups. This allowed the coding to be refined into a coherent system of broader emergent headings, taking account of the data as a whole.
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