Advantages of Focus Group Discussions in Social Sciences

According to studies made by Patton (2002) in the social sciences, FGD allow interviewers to analyze and evaluate people in a more normal environment than a personal one on one interview (Rushkoff 2005). In partnership with observations of the participants of the FGD, they can be utilized in order to gain comprehensive entrance to a variety of cultural and social groups, identifying pre-determined sites for study, identification of such areas, and raising unforeseen yet relevant concepts for further exploration and identification (Fischer 2005).

In addition a FGD have a very high apparent validity – due to the fact that they are relatively easy to comprehend, hence the results are easily understandable.

In addition to this, they are very cheap to do, easy to set up and if needed, a research group can easily increase the number of samples or the focus groups if needed for the study (Krueger 1994). Zikmund (1997) summarised the benefits of the FGD as covered by the 10 Ss: • Synergy or the potential of the group to integrate thoughts and ideas coming from each other’s opinion pertaining to the topic that would yield a wider range of information.

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Snowballing of ideas and concepts is an effect wherein initial inputs from participants provide a venue wherein additional inputs from other people are brought about. Serendipity or the notion of an idea can drop out unexpectedly that can create for a snowballing effect. Stimulation is the concept that participant’s views about the topic are retrieved because of the focus group processes and method of questioning.

Security is brought about because respondents are more likely to be candid as there will probably be other similar people there (Rushkoff 2005).

Spontaneity is also another benefit of an FGD due to the fact that people are not required to answer a question in any given order; as such this encourages a spontaneous response when people have a definite point of view. Specialisation is another component of a focus group discussion wherein a trained moderator can extract vital information from a focus group discussion that can potentially address the aims of the objectives.

Structure is also another benefit of an FGD because of the instituted frameworks and system that an FGD wherein moderators can easily inject topics and ideas effectively as compared to other qualitative research tools. Speed is also one of the benefits of a focus group discussion because quicker than individual interviews. Scrutiny is another benefit of an FGD as effective analysis can be observed by members of the research group and even by the participants themselves (Zikmund 1997).

As mentioned above, the benefits listed above would yield into a more comfortable environment for participants to provide the necessary information desired by researchers. In addition, the information provided by the researchers would have a very good chance of being highly informative and varied in such a way that a variety of perspectives can be tapped into in which case most if not all of the perspectives are considered in evaluating the research hypothesis and the objectives of the study.