SOCY 210 Study Guide - Focus Group, Face Validity

• School: Queen's University
• Department: Social Sci, Edu and Soc Work - Sociology
• Course: SOCY 210
• Professor: Vincent F Sacco

Document Summary

Special type of interviewing on a topic, small group rather than an individual. Several research subjects at the same time. Appropriate when there are a lot of people to interview but limited time. Surveys assumes that answers are already known and provide answers: focus groups provide the answers and meanings, no pre packaged answers. Provide feelings about social phenomenon and social process. Testing questions that will later be used in survey research: interpret findings. Useful in group interactions: useful in studying agreements and disagreements, meanings and understandings. Size matters: scheduling a large group for the same time is difficult, smaller groups if the topic is complex, emotional, controversial. Key variables- age,sex: would not mix homogenous variables together, focus groups should not know each other. Patterns of interaction will come into focus group. The more focus groups you do: more commonality, saturation of responses, once you notice there are no new things, you can stop.