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COMMUNICATION 18: COMMUNICATION RESEARCH

LESSON 3: MIDTERM
PART III: RESEARCH APPROACHES

Focus Groups: Reasons for Attending Films

Participant Observation: Video Game Players
Comparative Analysis: Images of Disneyland (and Disney World) in the American Popular
And Scholarly Press

FOCUS GROUP

Group interviews that are held to find out how people feel about some product, service or
issue.

A group of people are assembled and a free-form discussion is held, led by a moderator,
to obtain the desired information.

The focus group technique involves interviewing two or more people simultaneously,
with a moderator or facilitator leading the respondents in a relatively free discussion
about the topic under consideration..

Those who conduct focus groups are usually interested in people’s attitudes and
behaviors relative to some consumer product or choice (as in elections) they might make.

The aim of the focus group discussion is not to build consensus, but just the opposite – to
find out what each member of the group thinks about the topic under discussion, and to
elicit from each person his/her opinions and descriptions of the behavior of interest.

Method of probing to find out how people think and act.

Kind of collective depth interview, conducted with the pope that will lead to important
insights that can help manufacturers of products or sellers of services function more
efficiently.

Problems with Focus Groups

Getting a suitable group of people together to form the focus group. Find the people who
use the product, or who might be persuaded to use it. In actuality, It is not too difficult to
assemble focus groups.

Ability of the moderator is crucial. A focus group moderator must not be directive or too
assertive, but must also make sure the discussion doesn’t get off track.

Moderator: lets the discussion range while it is moving productively and producing
useful comment. Tasks include making certain that main points are covered, being
receptive to new points that arise, and making sure that each respondent has a chance to
talk.

Advantages:

Inexpensive way to do research.

Amount to be spent depended on the size of the group, the difficulties in sample selection
and the company that conducts the group.
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Focus group can be assembled quickly and the insights of the people who participate in
focus groups are immediately available.

Focus groups are often audiotaped and can also easily be videotaped, so that, in addition
to their opinions, respondents’ body language and other behaviors can be analyzed in
some detail.

Great degree of interviewing flexibility.

The moderator can easily follow-up on members’ comments, ask questions as needed,
solicit opinions, raise issues and so on.

Can follow chance leads and obtasin valuable information firsthand.

Group dynamics work so that respondents often become caught up in the discussion and
stimulate others to contribute, sometimes offering information that is very useful

In a group situation, inhibitions can often be overcome, and material buried in the psyche
can be accessed.

Disadvantages:

Generalizability of results. Represents only a relatively small group of people and they
may not be representative of the potential users of a product or service.

Respondents do not lend themselves to quantification. Respondents state their opinions,
display their attitudes and provide their recollections of past behavior (which may be
incorrect). These kind of discussions can provide answers to “why” questions, but not
“how many” questions, which is why some researchers think focus groups are primarily
useful for making pilot studies or as a complement to other kind of studies.

Some participants tend to monopolize the conversation and must be restrained without
inhibiting other members of the group.

Some of the members might be shy and have to be drawn out without being made
uncomfortable. Maybe inhibited by knowing that they are being tape-recorded.

Members must be told at the very beginning and must be asked to sign releases for the
taping; it is extremely unethical to record people without their knowledge.

Suggestions for Moderators

1. Explain the purpose of the focus group – how focus groups work, what their function is,
and so on. Tape record the discussion. Explain that you are recording the discussion so
that you can quote people accurately in the report you will be writing. If you do not have
a tape recorder or access to one, take careful notes and do the best you can.
2. Make the members of the group feel at ease. Explain to them that nobody is wrong in
focus groups, that all opinions are valuable.
3. Get any demographic information from your respondents that might be useful or
interesting.
4. Don’t direct the discussion, but draw people out, to the extent that you can.
5. Follow up on any leads you get.
6. Try to get everyone involved in the discussion; don’t allow anyone to dominate or
monopolize the conversation.
7. Make sure that the group sticks to the subject and doesn’t go off on tangents.
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8. Repeat back to people occasionally what you understand them to have said, as a means
of clarifying what they mean and perhaps stimulating others to contribute to the
discussion.
9. At certain times, ask specific members of the group for their opinions, instead of making
generalized requests.

PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION

The researcher participates (to varying degrees) in some activity in order to observe and
better understand those involved in the activity.

Fieldwork an investigator does to gain insight into some subculture or organization or
activity of interest.

Find out what goes on in the subcultures or organizations being studied and to gain some
insight into their operations and how they function.

Fieldwork: promises realistic theories that do justice to the complexity of actual social
life. Fieldworker personally enters natural social groups and studies them as far as
possible, in their full and natural state. . . .Most field research focuses only one or a few
groups, or upon a relatively small sample of individuals. This frees resources and also
allows fieldworkers to develop not only an inside knowledge of the group but also the
necessary rapport with subjects to conduct intensive multifaceted studies. However, this
small scale also leads to questions about the representativeness of fieldwork’s findings. .
. .Participant observstion obviously has its limitations, but it also is fascinating and
sometimes leads to extremely interesting insights about members of the groups being
observed.

Participant observers must make certain they maintain their objectivity and don’t go
“native” – that is, without being aware of what they are doing, adopt the beliefs and
values of the group they are studying. They also have to avoid changing the natural
dynamics of the group they are studying, so doing participant observation poses certain
tactical problems for researchers.

Concerns of the participant observer:

1. How do you obtain focus? That is, what is to be observed?

2. How do you record your observations without changing the natural dynamics of what you
are observing?
3. How do you make sure your notes and records are accurate?
4. How do you relate to those being observed and still maintain objectivity?
5. How much can you generalize from your observations? How do you need to qualify your
generalizations?

The essential core of this activity aims to understand another way of life from the native
point of view . . . .Fieldwork . . . .involves the disciplined study of what the world is like
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to people who have learned to see, hear, speak, think and act in ways that are different.
Rather than studying people, ethnography means learning from people.

COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

We look for differences; by observing differences, we gain perspective.

Research that compares and contrasts how something is done in one place or by one
group of people or members of one society with the way the same thing is done in a
different place or by a different group of people or society, generally at around the same
time.

Some of the comparisons that may be made in comparative research as follows:
differences over space, here contrasted with there, us contrasted with them, articles in the
popular press compared with scholarly articles.

Problems with a Comparative Perspective

Subjects of the comparison must be similar in some meaningful way; otherwise any
differences found will be irrelevant.

Requires subjects of comparison to take place or to exist in the same general time frame.

Advantages:

Offers a way of understanding the groups, institutions, cultures or societies being studied.

“Concepts are purely differential and defined not by their positive content but negatively
by their relations with other terms of the system.”

Disadvantages:

Reliability of the material you are working with. If you have statistical data, can you be
sure the data are accurate and that all the important and relevant data are available? If you
are relying on written material, do you know if the writer is biased in some way? What
evidence do writers offer for their opinions and judgments?