Group%20interviews

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Group interviews

• INFO 272. Qualitative Research Methods
• 11 March 2008

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focus groups

• Very popular in marketing research
• 8-10 people strangers
• A trained facilitator
• Opinions about a new (or existing) product or
  service
• Two-way mirror so management can observe

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focus groups

• an especially nice situation for revealing
  variations in perspectives and attitude and a
  ready means, through subtle pitting of one
  against the other, for distinguishing between
  shared and variable perspectives. schatzman and
  strauss 1973

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focus groups

• Can be ego-centric (would I buy this?)
• Can be object-oriented (how are factory processes
  organized and carried out?)
• Can be collaborative, consensus-driven (what
  financial services are most needed within this
  community?)

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the standard criticism

• Tendency to conform around particular views
  (social pressure)
• Although social pressure is also a reality of
  everyday life
• Often one member is very vocal and domineering
• Professional respondents
• Artificiality of setting and of social
  environment

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(No Transcript)
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Solomon Asch on conformity (1952)
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addressing conformity problems

• Some Techniques
• Nominal Group Technique write down ideas about
  a topic and then read and discuss
• Delphi Method write down response, collected by
  the facilitator, posted for public reading, then
  discussed.

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addressing conformity problems

• Who not to put in a group
• Boss and subordinate
• Who else??
• On sensitive topics
• Create more homogenous groups (all HIV people,
  all men, etc.)
• Combine focus groups with individual interviews

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addressing artificiality problems

• Using existing groups (rather than strangers)
• Families
• Social organizations

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Also
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analysing interviews

• transcribing tedious but necessary
• how tedious? 13 ratio (interviewtranscription
  time)
• memory jog making links between interviews
• code as you go, but make transcript itself
  visually distinct from your codes

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Exercise

• More good and bad interviews