Open AccessUsing Symbols and Shapes for Analysis in Small Focus Group Research
Author(s) -
Oladokun Omojola
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
the qualitative report
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.335
H-Index - 35
ISSN - 2160-3715
DOI - 10.46743/2160-3715/2016.2388
Subject(s) - focus group , focus (optics) , scholarship , scope (computer science) , prima facie , sociology , epistemology , qualitative research , psychology , social psychology , social science , computer science , political science , law , philosophy , physics , anthropology , optics , programming language
Substantial literature exists to support the growing importance of focus group research, having been around for decades. Its ubiquity under the scholarship radar is not in doubt while the analyses of findings commonly seen are scholarly and significantly sophisticated. However, these analyses have been found to be limited in scope for fresh adopters of the focus group method, non-literate beneficiaries of research findings and business people who are critically averse to lengthy textual statements about outcomes. This article introduces the use of symbols as a means of analyzing responses from small focus group discussions. It attempts to demonstrate that using symbols can substantially assist in the prima facie determination of perceptions from a focus group membership, its patterns of agreement and disagreement, as well as the sequence of its discussions.