for example, have questioned the emerging consensus about what constitutes the patient’s view, highlighting the extent to which this is context-dependent and a product of the focus group discussion setting. (This issue is re-visited in Chapters 8 and 9 which discuss the use of group interaction in the process of analysis of interaction in groups.) As Billig (1991) reminds us, views expressed in focus groups are highly specific and are ‘bound up in the argument [that is] happening’. It is misguided to attempt to extrapolate from focus group discussion to attempt to measure individuals’ attitudes. Although not explicitly utilizing focus groups as a ‘back-door’ route to survey data, some researchers, nevertheless, may express frustration regarding the perceived ‘slipperiness’, or elusiveness, of views throughout focus group discussions. Participants frequently change their minds about issues in the course of discussion, particularly where focus groups address a topic to which they had not previously paid a great deal of attention. Researchers are in danger of treating views as if they exist independently of our focus group discussions, when it would be more helpful to regard the research encounter itself as a ‘site of performance’ (Brannen and Pattman, 2005, p. 53). Virtually without fail, close analysis of focus group discussions highlights inconsistencies and contradictions. This is a problem only if one views attitudes as fixed. As David Morgan (1988) has observed: ‘Focus groups are useful when it comes to investigating what participants think, but they excel at uncovering why participants think as they do’ (1988, p. 25).
If looked at through a different lens, these so-called ‘slippery’ views can be perceived as a resource rather than as a problem. Focus groups excel at allowing us to study the processes of attitude formation and the mechanisms involved in interrogating and modifying views. Some researchers have used this advantage to illuminate, for example, the influences on public attitudes to distribution of donor liver grafts (Wilmot and Ratcliffe, 2002). Focus group researchers are also well-placed to interrogate shifts in views over time – for example, Järvinen and Demant (2011), who traced the evolution of the views of young Danish people about drug use, through comparing data generated via focus groups held, respectively, when participants were 14–15 years, 15–16 years and 18–19 years of age. (This study is discussed in more detail in Chapter 4 in relation to research design.)
Involving semi-structured topic guides (see Chapter 6) and allowing for in-depth consideration of open-ended questions and stimulus materials, focus groups have the capacity to reflect issues and concerns salient to participants rather than closely following the researcher’s agenda. This means that the resulting data can yield surprises. For example, participants may take factors into account in their deliberations that researchers have not anticipated and this may highlight the relevance for the researcher of alternative explanations for perceptions or behaviour – or even of new theoretical frameworks that can usefully be brought to bear in analysis.
Focus groups are also especially well-suited to uncovering participants’ misconceptions and how these can arise. It is for this reason that focus groups have been used so frequently, to good advantage, in gauging the impact of health promotion campaigns. Keane et al. (1996) carried out research into African-American beliefs about immunization for infants, conceptualization of illness and efficacy of vaccines. Interestingly, the focus group discussions in the context of this study revealed that, as parents viewed fever as a primary indicator of illness, vaccines were seen as causing rather than preventing illness. Focus groups excel at identifying and exploring such misconceptions and their consequences for behaviour.
Another challenge frequently issued to focus group researchers is that of demonstrating that participants are telling us ‘the truth’. Again, this concern relates to the practice in questionnaire design of including questions with the specific purpose of cross-checking responses in order to highlight any inconsistencies. Working within the qualitative tradition, however, it is these very inconsistencies that afford the richest potential for understanding the process through which participants form their views and how they weigh up and even accommodate apparently contradictory positions. All researchers have to face the possibility that respondents are simply telling us what they think we want to hear and, when taking part in focus groups, they may also fear the disapproval of their peer group (Smithson, 2000). However, this is good news for the researcher with a particular interest in studying the mechanisms through which the peer group manages the articulation, development and negotiation of views; moreover, this is where focus groups come into their own.
Views expressed in focus groups may also be different from those expressed outside of the research context. However, holding focus groups with pre-existing teams, support groups, or friendship groups may facilitate more rounded or reasoned responses, since group members have both the opportunity and the knowledge required in order to challenge others’ accounts and ask them to account for their comments. As Wilson (1997) argues:
We will never know what respondents might have revealed in the ‘privacy’ of an in-depth interview but we do know what they were prepared to elaborate and defend in the company of their peers. (1997, p. 218)
Some researchers have waxed lyrical about the potential of focus groups to empower participants. Johnson (1996), for example, who published a paper on focus groups entitled ‘It’s good to talk’, considers that focus groups can stimulate significant changes and can lead participants to redefine their problems in a more politicized way. Focus groups have been a key component of the ‘sociological intervention’ approach developed and advocated by the French sociologist Alain Touraine (1981). The role for the sociologist, as envisioned by Touraine, reflects the now somewhat outmoded Marxist notion of the intelligentsia as heralding social change – even revolution – through spearheading social movements. This approach involved bringing people together in groups over a considerable period of time and relied on an ‘epistemology of reception’ that stresses the importance of feedback from participants elicited by presentation of sociological theory to the relevant audience. Some commentators, such as Munday (2006), have criticized Touraine’s approach as privileging the perspective of the sociologist over those who are participating in the research. However, the interests of researcher and ‘researched’ are not necessarily all that different. Gómez et al. (2011) point out that action research fits well with what they call a ‘dialogic turn’ in current societies. They argue: ‘Today people expect to participate in the wider society and discuss the issues in their lives, from families and intimate relationships to their children’s schools, their workplaces, or their city’ (p. 236). Focus groups, if used critically ‘can contribute to challenging the prevailing orthodoxy and thereby overcome established regimes of truth in the Foucauldian tradition’ (Stahl et al., 2011, p. 378). (For further discussion of Foucauldian-influenced research, see the section on philosophical and methodological traditions in Chapter 3.)
The view that focus groups engender inherently more equal relationships between researchers and researched has also led some commentators to claim that they are a feminist method. A thoughtful discussion by Wilkinson (1999), however, concludes that although focus groups are suited to addressing feminist research topics, their use does not necessarily constitute ‘feminist research’. Moreover, as Brooks (2014) points out, there may well not be such a thing as a definitive feminist methodology and researchers should be mindful that all women – even those in similar situations – do not necessarily share the same experiences of oppression, discrimination and powerlessness. As Bloor et al. (2001, p. 15) conclude: focus groups are ‘not the authentic voice of the people’ and whether or not focus groups actually ‘empower’ anyone depends on what happens after the group discussion.
We have seen, then, that both proponents and detractors of focus groups as a method, can be prone to exaggeration. Some criticisms of focus groups and their capacity for generating data and affording insights can be
