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A Thought on Focus Group Method

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Monday, October 1, 2012 by


In this week’s topic, I want to blog focus groups, which is one of face-to-face inquire methods.  While I was reading Knight’s “Small-Scale Research”, I was reminded of the project about IT Strategic plan back to last year. An email was sent out to the college community regarding the focus groups that formed of people from different departments and also groups that includes people from different employment groups. I cannot remember the details about it, but it is about the IT department making its strategic plan and a consultant was hired to conduct certain research to help making the strategic plan. When I read the “focus groups” section, I am kind of interested in it. According to Knight, “Researchers often use focus groups to explore provisional findings either by summarizing them to a selection of participants or by bringing the findings to other groups of stakeholders in the inquiry.” I think in medium size workplace, focus groups is a most often used method to conduct some workplace related research.  Since the cost is low and most workplace has limited funding for its research, even though the results of focus group cannot prove anything, it provides the informants’ perspectives and the information can be used for thought, refection and further investigation. The information can be valuable for employer in making their policies and plans.  


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