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Focus groups in health research: A methodological review
Shane A Thomas
Department of Behavioural Health Sciences, La Trobe University, VIC
Ian Steven
Research and Health Promotion Unit, Royal Australian College of General Practitioners
Colette Browning
Department of Behavioural Health Sciences, La Trobe University, VIC
Elizabeth Dickens
Department of Psychological Medicine, Monash University, VIC
Elizabeth Eckermann
Arts Faculty, Deakin University, VIC
Lindsay B Carey
Department of Behavioural Health Sciences, La Trobe University, VIC
Stan Pollard
Research and Health Promotion Unit, Royal Australian College of General Practitioners
Abstract
In recent years, public health and medical researchers have increasingly employed the concepts and methodologies of the social and behavioural sciences. Much public health research involves the collection of information from people concerning their health knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, behaviours and customs. The health researcher is confronted with a large array of alternative methodologies and theoretical paradigms from which to choose in order to study these issues. This paper is concerned with an introduction to the use of focus groups in health research.
A focus group involves a discussion amongst a small group of people including a moderator or facilitator. The facilitator usually introduces the topics for discussion and facilitates the contribution of the participants in the group. The discussion is usually recorded, transcribed and subjected to further subsequent analysis. It is not intended nofeasible to review all available methodological alternatives to focus groups as this has already been done elsewhere (see for example Bailey, 1987; Denzin, 1978; Hawe. Degeling and Hall, 1990; Holland, Detels and Knox, 1985; Polgar and Thomas, 1991). However, some discussion in this paper will centre on the use of focus groups in comparison with and in conjunction with other methodologies.
Robert Merton is acknowledged as the originator of the focussed interview, which in turn was the forerunner of the focus group (see Merton, 1946; Merton, Fiske and Kendall, 1956), although Merton (1987) has recently argued that there are some conceptual and procedural discontinuities between his original work and recent implementations of focus group methodology. Merton's original work was designed to measure listener sentiments concerning radio shows. This orientation has resulted in the widespread use of focussed interview procedures in advertising and market research from the 1940s to the present day (see, for example, Higginbotham and Cox, 1979) and, as will be reviewed later in this paper, in health research.
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