Focus Groups

This weeks task was to conduct a focus group on a specific subject to do with researching digital cultures. Our group chose observing to what extent we live in the public sphere, in particular through the information we post on facebook. Our group was an average sample size of 8 people and we had prepared a short list of questions to incite some conversation and first hand insight into the ideas and views of others. We filmed the session for later analysis of the focus group data (Link with video to come)

Our questions started off as follows:

1. Introduce yourself and explain what made you join Facebook?
2. After joining and becoming a Facebook user, what activities kept you coming back?
   
3. How do you manage your privacy online?
4. Do you ever feel your privacy is out of your control on Facebook? i.e. not being able to control what others write, post, tag you in?

We wanted to bring the focus group to a start with a question that functioned as both an opening circle and an introductory question that started the attendees thinking. It also paved the ground for some of the key questions that were to come.

The questions flowed as we hoped; however, as the mediator, I found that to many questions were not probing enough. Question 4 was a yes/no question that resulted in having to probe the group to obtain more qualitative information.

Another issue I found that as the mediator I wanted to participate in the conversation and discussion, so as I probed for more information some of my questions may have been a bit biased.

The use of Focus groups are a great method in producing qualitative analysis produced through interactions by and between the participants.