What About Focus Groups?

Discussion 1: What About Focus Groups?

Focus groups can provide rich, thick descriptions of experiences, attitudes, and opinions shared by a group of individuals who have in common a shared experience about the phenomena you are studying.

Review the resources in the course and online about the challenges, advantages, and disadvantages of using focus groups as part your research methods. Consider if, for your topic, whether a focus group would be a good choice for data collection.

For this Discussion (2-TWO PAGES), you will explore the differences between individual interviewing and focus groups.

To prepare for this Discussion:

Review the Learning Resources related to coding, data analysis, and focus groups.
Review the focus group media program found in the Learning Resources and consider how you might use a focus group in collecting data for the topic of your research.

Post your explanation of:

The difference between collecting data using individual interviews and a focus group (e.g., intent, selecting participants, conducting the interview or focus group)
Given the topic you are currently using for your research, would you consider using a focus group for your study? Why or why not?
Be sure to support your main post and response post with reference to the weeks Learning Resources and other scholarly evidence in APA style.

Respond to one of your colleagues posts (1-ONE PAGE) with a suggestion about using a focus group for their research idea. Your suggestion may include 34 interview questions to ask, considerations for sampling; or how to manage recruiting participants.

This week, we begin to explore the actual labor of qualitative research data collection. While there are many ways to collect qualitative data, such as individual interviews, questionnaires, observational notes, and archival content, we will explore focus groups. We will look at the content creation from focus groups and then incorporate the coding process that we practiced in week 5. Of course, be sure to carefully read and view all of the resources this week, as they will play heavily in the discussion tasks and the next major assignment tasks.

Discussion One (1). Here are the required headings:

1) Individual Interviews vs Focus Groups
2) My Data Collection
3) Reflection and Questions

Your response post should help your classmate explore content collection (1-ONE PAGE). Make sure that your post is substantive, that the paragraphs are fully formed, and that your own insights/opinions are included.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Discussion 2: Coding Scholar of Change Video #2

In Week 5, you selected one of the Scholars of Change videos to begin the coding process. For this Discussion, you will select another Scholars of Change video, different than the one you selected in Week 5, (2-TWO PAGE) to begin coding not only your field notes but also the transcript of the video you downloaded.

To prepare for this Discussion:

1) Review the chapters in the Saldaa text.
2) Review the Introduction to Coding and From Content to Coding media programs in the Learning Resources.
3) Refer back to your observational field notes from Weeks 14 Scholars of Change videos.
4) From the remaining videos, choose a different Scholars of Change video and refer to your notes from your observation
for this Discussion.
5) Access the transcript you downloaded for the media program of the Scholars of Change video you selected for this
Discussion.
6) Begin to code the transcript and the observational field notes of the Scholar of Change video you chose. (Note: You will
only need one or two codes for this Discussion, although more are acceptable.)

* Post a brief description of the video you chose.
* Next, include an example of one or two codes and provide quotes from your notes or transcript to support your example. *
* Finally, explain your reasoning for this coding.

Be sure to support your main post and response post with reference to the weeks Learning Resources and other scholarly evidence in APA style.

Respond to one of your colleagues posts and explain how your colleagues codes are similar or different than yours.

Discussion Two (2). Here are the required headings:

1) Video Description
2) Code examples
3) Explanation

Reflection and Questions

Your response post should help your classmate explore coding choices by offering comparisons and contrasts to your own coding choices. Make sure that your post is substantive, that the paragraphs are fully formed, and that your own insights/opinions are included.

Video #2

https://www.dropbox.com/s/f8dow1925c5co9q/Drug%20addiction%20Video%202.MP4?dl=0