Focus Group

A moderated small-group discussion designed to elicit qualitative data through participant interaction. Typically six to ten participants meet for sixty to ninety minutes around a structured set of questions, with a moderator guiding the conversation and an assistant taking field notes. The defining feature is that data come from group dynamics — agreement, disagreement, refinement, story-prompting between participants — that an individual interview cannot produce.

Distinguishing features

Krueger and Casey (2015) characterise focus groups by five features: a small group of participants, with similar characteristics relevant to the research question, who provide qualitative data in a focused discussion to help understand a topic of interest. The group is focused in two senses: composition is purposive rather than representative, and the discussion is steered toward a defined topic rather than ranging open-ended. Membership is usually homogeneous on dimensions that would otherwise inhibit talk (age, role, language background) and heterogeneous on dimensions of interest.

Procedure

A typical study runs three to five groups per condition or population segment, on the rationale that within-group dynamics differ enough that single-group findings can mislead. Question routes move from opening (warm-up), through introductory and transition questions, to key questions and an ending summary; Krueger and Casey describe this as a funnel. Recording is typically audio plus moderator notes; full transcription with attention to who says what and to interactional moves is standard.

Strengths and limits

Focus groups are efficient for surfacing range, language, and shared concerns and are useful in early-stage research, programme evaluation, and needs analysis. Limits: they do not produce generalisable frequency data, are vulnerable to dominant speakers and group conformity, and cannot probe individual experience to the depth of one-to-one interviewing. Sensitive topics, where social desirability or fear of disclosure shape what people will say, are usually better served by individual interviews.

Use in applied linguistics

Focus groups appear in needs analysis for course design, programme evaluation, materials piloting, and studies of teacher and learner attitudes. Particular care is needed with second-language participants: language choice (L1, L2, or both), proficiency-matched grouping, and the moderator's linguistic competence shape what counts as data and what is recoverable in transcription.

References

• Krueger, R. A., & Casey, M. A. (2015). Focus Groups: A Practical Guide for Applied Research (5th ed.). SAGE.