Focus groups

A focus group is a small, but demographically diverse group of people whose reactions are studied especially in market research or political analysis in guided or open discussions about a new product or something else to determine the reactions that can be expected from a larger population. It is a form of qualitative research consisting of interviews in which a group of people are asked about their perceptions, opinions, beliefs, and attitudes towards a product, service, concept, advertisement, idea, or packaging. Questions are asked in an interactive group setting where participants are free to talk with other group members. During this process, the researcher either takes notes or records the vital points he or she is getting from the group. Care should be noted to select members of the group carefully for effective and authoritative responses.

Focus groups have a long history and were used during the Second World War (1939-1945) to examine the effectiveness of propaganda. Associate director sociologist Robert K. Merton set up focus groups at the Bureau of Applied Social Research in the USA prior to 1976. Psychologist and marketing expert Ernest Dichter coined the term "focus group" itself before his death in 1991.

In library and information science, when the library intends to work on its collection, the library consults the users who are the reason the library was established. This is an important process in meeting the needs of the users.

In the social sciences and urban planning, focus groups allow interviewers to study people in a more natural conversation pattern than typically occurs in a one-to-one interview. In combination with participant observation, they can be used for learning about groups and their patterns of interaction. An advantage is their fairly low cost compared to surveys, as one can get results relatively quickly and increase the sample size of a report by talking with several people at once. Another advantage is that they can be used as an occasion for participants to learn from one another as they exchange and build on one another's views, so that the participants can experience the research as an enriching encounter. This counteracts the extractive nature of research which seeks to "mine" participants for data (with no benefit for them) as criticized by various authors, and in particular Indigenous-oriented authors (and others sharing similar sentiments), as explained, for example, by Romm (2015): http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/2087

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