User:Elizabethrudman/sandbox

Draft of focus group wikipedia additions

Lead additional information
Marketers can use the information collected through focus groups to receive insights on a specific product, issue, or topic.

Focus groups or group interviews is a technique used by sociologists, and in different fields of study which include communication studies, education, political science, and public health.

Focus groups is a research method that is intended to collect data, allow for interactive and directed discussions by a researcher.

History
Focus groups first started as a research method in the 1940's at Columbia University while conducting market research concerning radio soap operas. During the Second World War, Robert Merton set out to analyze the effectiveness of propaganda with the use of focus groups. Paul Lazarsfeld had also received a government contract to get insight on individuals' responses to war radio propaganda. Merton created a procedure where twelve participants at a radio studio would respond to negatively associated content by hitting a red button or positively associated information by hitting a green button. From there, Merton created an interviewing procedure to further gain insights and subjective reactions from the participants.

The use of focus groups by sociologists gained popularity in the 1980's when Merton published a report on focused interviews.

Online Focus Groups
Focus groups typically are conducted face-to-face, but the emergence of technology has enabled qualitative research to reach online approaches. There are two types of online methods; synchronous and asynchronous. Synchronous methods allows for researchers to conduct live chats which try to mimic in-person interviews. Asynchronous methods collect participant information through online communication such as forums and email lists.

Advantages to online focus groups allow those to participant who are geographically far from each other and increase participation by engaging with those who are more comfortable with internet use. Disadvantages of online focus groups include losing associated non-verbal behavior which could factor into assessing qualitative research.

Peer Review
For the first section I would double check that a focus group can only be eight to ten people. If they can be bigger or smaller I would edit that part and just say "This research consists of analyzing discussions with groups varying in size, from small groups to much larger groups." something along those lines because what you have now makes it seem like it can only be a focus group if it has eight to ten people. I think the history section is very strong and has the right amount of information in it. For the online focus groups section if there is information on it you could say which online focus group is more popular, asynchronous or synchronous. Overall, I think this is really good and very informative.

~Katie Pierce ""