Redefining Statistical Data Collection - Focus Groups

The focus group is a form of qualitative research method that has risen to high popularity in the second half of the twentieth century because of the primary need to understand the effect of a particular object or product on its target group. Simplistically speaking, a focus group is research in which a group of people are asked about their perceptions, opinions, beliefs, and attitudes towards a product, service, concept, advertisement, or idea. This may give a brief overview if not an accurate sample of the aspect at hand.

Focus Groups are primary fields of research. That is in general they provide an overview or general direction of opinion without too accurate results. Therefore they are useful for determining first order reactions. Focus groups are used in marketing and seen as a very important tool for getting feedback regarding new products, as well as various topics. In particular, focus groups allow companies wishing to develop, package, name, or test market a new product, to discuss, view the new product before it is made available to the public. This can provide invaluable information about the potential market acceptance of the product.

In general terms, focus group organizes interviews, conducted by a trained moderator among a small group of interviewees. The interview is conducted in an unstructured and natural way where respondents are free to give views from any aspect. Industry trends today usually focus on giving out questionnaire to a group of people in isolation and evaluating their responses to the object or concept in question.

With the rapid rise of the internet and mobile computing standards, online focus groups are on the rise. Several websites provide online focus group services. They are a subset of online research methods. In online focus groups the participants are prescreened according to the company’s needs and then they are asked to log into a particular server at a particular time at which the social experiment is taking place. 

The participants can usually remain anonymous in this case which increases the probability that the participant will give truthful feedbacks. Some focus groups allow participants to discuss amongst themselves about the questions in hand thus forming a more focused opinion. The advantages of this method are that the answers are more specialized having rooted out more immature answers because of discussions and cross questioning. However, the disadvantages are that participants tend to become biased in some cases.