Focus Group Benefits and Depth Interview Methods

Advantages of Focus Groups

• Synergism: When a group of people with similar interests discuss an issue together, they are likely to produce richer insights, a wider range of information, and innovative ideas than individual responses obtained privately.
• Snowballing: In a group discussion, one person's comment often triggers a chain reaction from the other participants and generates more views.
• Stimulation: Once the focus group discussion is underway, the general level of excitement over the topic increases, and a large number of respondents want to express their ideas and expose their feelings.
• Security: Because of the homogeneity of composition, focus group participants often share similar feelings. This enables them to feel comfortable and uninhibited when expressing their ideas and feelings.
• Spontaneity: In focus groups, participants are not required to answer specific questions. Their responses can be spontaneous and unconventional, reflecting an accurate picture of their views.
• Speed: Because people discuss issues simultaneously, data collection and analysis in focus groups proceed relatively quickly.

Depth Interview Techniques

Depth interview techniques are used to probe deeper motivations, emotions, and personal meanings that influence behavior. Two important techniques are laddering and hidden issue questioning.

Laddering

Laddering is a line of questioning that proceeds from product characteristics to user characteristics. This technique allows the researcher to tap into the consumer's network of meanings. Laddering provides a way to probe into consumers' deep underlying psychological and emotional reasons that affect their purchasing decisions. When determining why a person buys a product, researchers want to know more than simple quality and low price; laddering helps uncover the values and personal motives behind those choices.

Hidden Issue Questioning

Hidden issue questioning focuses not on socially shared values but on personal sore spots and deeply felt concerns. It is not the same as focusing on broad social values such as human rights or legal norms; instead, it targets intimately held personal concerns. Often these concerns are not easily revealed by direct questioning, so an interviewer must exercise tact when eliciting this kind of information. For example, the interviewer could ask the participant about their ideal life or their vision of a perfect world.

Symbolic Analysis

Symbolic analysis attempts to analyze the symbolic meaning of objects by comparing them with their opposites. It helps reveal underlying associations and cultural meanings attached to everyday items and practices.

Example Question

For example, an interviewer might ask the participant if they regularly use e-mail. If so, the interviewer could follow with: what would the participant do if e-mail didn’t exist?