Backroom Research

I wasn’t sure if we were required to blog this week, but all the same I thought I would take this opportunity to start and discuss the Peer Review Assignment.  After perusing through the article options, I have chosen the paper entitled ‘An Insight into the Networking Approaches of Women Entrepreneurs in Mauritius’ which involves the use of focus groups.  I turned to both Luker and Knight to brush up on this methodological approach.  I find it interesting that Luker mentions that mainstream social scientists tend to view focus groups as unscientific and that journals generally do not publish articles where the data is derived from them (p. 183).  Luker does not really explain as to why that is but Knight states that the data from focus groups prove nothing because the number of informants are usually small and dominant individuals can overpower the opinions of others resulting in some issues only receiving brief attention (p. 70-71).  Both Luker and Knight, however, support the use of focus groups for multi-method approaches, to jump-start and refine research instruments and to explore provisional findings (Luker, p. 183-184) (Knight, p. 71).  After reading both Luker and Knight’s views on focus groups, I can already see where my Peer Review on my chosen article is headed.