روش گروه متمرکز:دیدگاه هایی درباره مصاحبه گروه متمرکز در مورد بهداشت جنسی نوجوانان

This article concerns the manner in which group interaction during focus groups impacted upon the data generated in a study of adolescent sexual health. Twenty-nine group interviews were conducted with secondary school pupils in Ireland, and data were subjected to a qualitative analysis. In exploring the relationship between method and theory generation, we begin by focusing on the ethnographic potential within group interviews. We propose that at times during the interviews, episodes of acting-out, or presenting a particular image in the presence of others, can be highly revealing in attempting to understand the normative rules embedded in the culture from which participants are drawn. However, we highlight a specific problem with distinguishing which parts of the group interview are a valid representation of group processes and which parts accurately reflect individuals’ retrospective experiences of reality. We also note that at various points in the interview, focus groups have the potential to reveal participants’ vulnerabilities. In addition, group members themselves can challenge one another on how aspects of their sub-culture are represented within the focus group, in a way that is normally beyond reach within individual interviews. The formation and composition of focus groups, particularly through the clustering of like-minded individuals, can affect the dominant views being expressed within specific groups. While focus groups have been noted to have an educational and transformative potential, we caution that they may also be a source of inaccurate information, placing participants at risk. Finally, the opportunities that focus groups offer in enabling researchers to cross-check the trustworthiness of data using a post-interview questionnaire are considered. We conclude by arguing that although far from flawless, focus groups are a valuable method for gathering data about health issues.

There has been much support in the literature for the view that focus groups are an appropriate method of choice for health research into sensitive issues, and for investigating people's experiences of illness and using health services (Green & Thorogood, 2004; Kitzinger (1994) and Kitzinger (2000)). While group interviewing may be conducted using a variety of styles, our emphasis here is on analysing interviews where adolescents previously known to one another are brought together for the purposes of generating data about a topic—in this case sexual health—in an informal atmosphere. What distinguishes group interviews from one-to-one in-depth interviews is their capacity to capture the dynamics of group interaction and to exploit this in attempting to understand a topic. Thus, rather than simply responding to the interviewer's questions, ‘natural’ group interviews allow the researcher to experience, albeit in an artificial setting, the jokes, insults, innuendoes, responses, sensitivities and dynamics of the group, as group members interact with one another, which may offer new insights into the substantive topic under investigation. (The extent to which our groups resembled ‘natural’ groups will be explored a little further on in the methodology section.) Thus, participants are deemed to be performing particular social actions in the course of the interview, and not just merely recalling information or experiences that they already have had (Crossley, 2002). In spite of the fact that group interaction is deemed to be a central feature of focus groups, in a paper published in 1994, Kitzinger observed a virtual absence of any discussion concentrating on the conversation between participants in more than 40 published accounts of focus groups that she had reviewed. More recently, Webb and Kevern (2001) have noted than much of the nursing literature on focus groups has not drawn on direct experience with using the method. Although there has been an increase in the number of articles that exploit the interactive dimension of focus groups in developing interpretations (Crossley, 2002; Green & Hart, 1999; Green, Siddall, & Murdoch, 2002; Pini, 2002; Wilkinson & Kitzinger, 2000), in most cases data generated in focus groups tend to be cut and sliced to produce evidence to support a theoretical argument in much the same way as usually happens with individual interviews. There has also been a growing number of papers published in recent years on using focus groups with children (Heary & Hennessy, 2002; Hennessy & Heary, 2005; Mauthner, 1997). The potential for focus groups to offer children peer support when compared with individual interviews has been noted (Hennessy & Heary, 2005; Mauthner, 1997). Heary and Hennessy (2002) suggest that while focus groups can be variously used with children, further analysis of the group process itself is required. Focus groups have also been used previously in studying sexuality among adolescent groups (Wight, 1994). In his study of sexuality among young males, Wight (1994) noted that during the focus groups, some participants admitted to feeling restrained in discussing sex in the presence of others in the group. In this article, we concentrate on some issues that emerged in an analysis of the process of interaction during focus groups in a study of adolescents on their perceptions of sex and sexuality. We provide empirical support for some notions that have come to be associated with group interviewing and add new theoretical insights, supported with empirical examples, to this body of methodological knowledge.

In this paper, we have attempted to contribute to the existing knowledge base on focus groups by analysing the social interaction that occurred during group interviews with adolescents on the topic of sexual health. We have analysed how group interaction impacted upon the kind of knowledge produced in the study. Our data suggested that at times during the interview, the performance of the group lent support to the very phenomena that participants were recalling retrospectively as a dimension of their culture. While we argue that exaggerated or fabricated aspects of data gleaned during focus groups may be a valid representation of sub-cultural group processes, we also highlighted the dilemma that analysts face in attempting to determine which components of the interview mimic normative group dynamics of the culture and which can be taken at face value. In addition to capturing group processes, we noted that vulnerabilities and anxieties of participants were revealed in the interviews. Furthermore, marginal voices within focus groups may problematise the trustworthiness of the dominant group view emerging and even serve to moderate it. We also considered how the formation and composition of groups may be important in understanding variations in dominant themes across a range of focus groups on the same topic, although there may be other factors that also explain variation. Our data provide further empirical support for the view that focus groups can be educational and transformative (Green & Thorogood, 2004); however, we caution that information exchange among group members may also place participants at risk, if the focus group itself is the source of inaccurate information. Finally, an opportunity to cross-check the trustworthiness of focus group data, as participants interpret the notion of truth, arises through the administration of a post-interview questionnaire that presents a realist version of validity. Overall, we argue that the course of the focus group is varied and unstable—at various points in the focus group different possibilities emerge. There are possibilities for acting out of performances and managing impressions, for exchanging information, for exposing vulnerabilities and for wittingly or unwittingly going against the tide of opinion.