Focus Groups and Ethnography
Human Organization – March 01, 1995
Source: OpenAlex
Summary
Focus groups can significantly enhance our understanding of social dynamics. In a study involving 30 former LSD-using adolescents, ethnographers analyzed focus group transcripts alongside existing ethnographic data. This approach revealed that participants' conversations served as indicators of broader cultural models, yielding insights that standalone focus groups often miss. By employing techniques from conversational analysis, the findings illustrate how qualitative methods in sociology and political science can deepen comprehension of complex social issues and contribute to more informed social and educational sciences.
Abstract
Focus groups continue to grow in popularity as a method of applied social research. The two authors, anthropologically trained ethnographers, show how a particular focus group with former LSD-using adolescents dovetailed with other ethnographic data. By looking at a focus group transcript using a simplified version of techniques in conversational analysis, and by interpreting the utterances as indexes of more comprehensive folk-models derived from other data, focus groups yield richer understandings than a simple stand-alone use can provide.