Focus groups from home: Conducting virtual focus groups during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond

Augmented Focus Groups: On Leveraging the Peculiarities of Online Virtual Worlds when Conducting In-World Focus Groups

Increasingly, academic researchers and practitioners have been using online 3D virtual worlds such as Second Life (SL) to conduct focus groups. When doing so, researchers and practitioners have copied and pasted as is, in this new environment, the qualitative methodologies commonly used in real-world focus groups. However, the relevance of using standard focus group methodologies within an onli...

Occupation groups and Covid-19

Virtual Focus Groups: New Frontiers in Research

New information and communication technologies in the form of learning management systems provide unique and inventive opportunities for qualitative researchers. Their intrinsic ability to record discursive data in text format accurately and to provide safe, secure, and anonymous environments for participants makes them amenable for use as advanced research tools. In this article, the authors r...

Focus groups.

This paper introduces focus group methodology and discusses its relevance to those researching health care provision. As a qualitative data collection technique, the focus group has advantages over other qualitative methods, such as the in-depth interview and nominal group technique. This paper highlights these advantages after providing guidelines on group composition, the management of group ...

Practical advice for planning and conducting focus groups.

Article: Focus groups, originally called focused interviews, have been used as a data collection method since World War II and are commonly used in social science research. Krueger (1994) describes a focus group as "a carefully planned discussion designed to obtain perceptions on a defined area of interest in a permissive, nonthreatening environment" (p. 6). Guided by a skilled interviewer, par...