Educational Research Methods
A site to support teaching and learning...
Focus groups
Group interviews are sometimes considered synonymous with focus groups. These are really rather different techniques, although there is a continuum of possibilities between pure group interviews and focus groups.
“Focus groups (which are set up more as observed discussions than interviews) have become common in market ‘research’, and often involve quite large groups of (half-a-dozen or more) people talking through ideas. In this situation, discussion is encouraged, and the researcher might be more interested in any consensus positions that derive from the debates rather than individual viewpoints fed in.
Focus groups are clearly not helpful in looking at individual learners’ ideas in any depth, but are a useful way of involving more people as informants without significantly increasing the time available for interviews.” (Taber, 2013: 277)
Gilbert and Pope (1986a, p.62) report an approach to studying learners’ ideas in science which involves setting up group discussions. Their aim was to provide a context where learners would develop their thinking about scientific topics. They used this approach with middle school pupils in Germany, using groups of 2-3 learners, using a deck of cards designed for the ‘interview about instances’ technique focusing on the concept of energy.
“Gilbert and Pope (1986a) found that the groups would carry out the task, although the quality of discussion depended on group composition (p.75). the presence of a researcher in the group has a disproportionate impact, and changed the nature of the discussion to be more like a teaching context (p.74), whereas when the children were left alone the process would elicit a discussion rich in the their own ideas” (Pope and Denicolo, 1986: 159).
Gilbert, J. K., & Pope, M. L. (1986). Small group discussions about conceptions in science: a case study. Research in Science & Technological Education, 4(1), 61-76.
Pope, M. L., & Denicolo, P. (1986). Intuitive theories - a researcher’s dilemma: some practical methodological implications. British Educational Research Journal, 12(2), 153-166.
An alternative technique is to set up and record group discussions, without the researcher being present.
Example of a task given to a focus group.
Sample of a transcript from a focus group discussion
This is a personal site of Keith S. Taber to support teaching of educational research methods.
(Dr Keith Taber is Professor of Science Education at the University of Cambridge.)
Taber, K. S. (2013). Classroom-based Research and Evidence-based Practice: An introduction (2nd ed.). London: Sage.
