Bella Rubens and Dr Jennifer McGowan, Experimental Psychology Department, University College London
Welcome back to the third instalment in our series, where we will introduce what is arguably the most exciting element of the research – the focus groups! We will also update you on an amendment we made to the data collection process and our rationale for this.
Focus groups are commonly used in psychological research. They enable a researcher to hear from multiple participants in a single sitting. Focus group discussion is typically lively. Participants often disagree or offer varied views on the subject matter, which leads to nuanced insight into the phenomenon.
Focus groups are relatively small, containing only a handful of participants typically. Our focus groups will contain 4-6 participants and last one hour each. We planned to conduct focus groups with five participant groups: parents, teachers, teaching assistants, special educational needs co-ordinators and senior leadership. According to our original plan, staff focus groups were separated to prevent hierarchy (or perceived hierarchy) impacting participant involvement. For example, it was hypothesised that if a senior leadership team member was involved in a focus group with teaching assistants, this may have inhibited the teaching assistants from participating.
However, the process of recruitment was delayed unexpectedly and inevitably impacted by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Schools and their communities continue to experience increased stress and workload. As a result, we had to re-consider our decision to separate staff focus groups into role-based groups. A lot of research and ethics is concerned with balancing different priorities. In this case, we had to consider the benefits of separating staff against the logistical challenges of doing so in light of the additional workload on schools. On reflection, we believed it best for participants and the research to submit an amendment to the research ethics board at UCL. Their acceptance of this amendment supports our judgement.
Now back to focus groups! The focus group facilitator will open the session with an introduction, summary of the focus group and a verbal review of key ethical information so that this is fresh in the minds of those taking part. At the end of the introduction we will remind participants that all experiences and perspectives are of equal value and importance to the researchers. This has been added as a result of the amendment, to ensure all participants feel valued regardless of perceived status.
Once the introduction is finished, the focus group facilitator guides participants through several questions, which have been designed specifically for this project to explore the research aims. Some of these questions can be found in the first blog post in this series. Their role from then on is to guide the discussion, and to talk as little as possible themselves!
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