Methodological Evaluation: A Review of Focus Group Discussion

Focus group discussion is an interactive and collaborative methodology in which a group of people, comprised of researchers and the people researched, come together in a specific setting to discuss the topic being studied. The moderator developed discussion questions to keep the discussion focused. This dynamic and creative method is widely used in human geography and other social sciences disciplines to understand people’s perspectives on the discussion topic. Moreover, focus group techniques depend on various factors like local context, political/global environment, location, age, and discussion time, including the nature of the research topic. The reason scholars use this method is that focus groups provide space for vulnerable people to share their views and opinions and give them the opportunity to discuss the topic in groups that they may not normally discuss. Moreover, it is also used to creatively engage participants, prompt their responses, and increase participants’ interest. For the successful focus groups, some factors are considered carefully with respect to the participants’ viability, such as the feasibility of discussion time for the participants and local language, as focus groups have the potential to shift the power balance to participants, but if they are not comfortable with the language, it can lead to a power imbalance and influence their empowerment to participate freely and develop a dynamic discussion in the group. There are no set standards for conducting in-depth focus groups, but researchers need to carefully consider focus group techniques, group composition, size, target population, time, and location by the research topic.