scholarly journals Conducting Online Focus Groups - Practical Advice for Information Systems Researchers

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Schulze ◽  
Manuel Trenz ◽  
Zhao Cai ◽  
Chee-Wee Tan
Author(s):  
Carla Farinha ◽  
Miguel Mira da Silva

Healthcare Information Systems (HIS) are essential in the healthcare industry since they manipulate vital information. For example, HIS may keep track of the patient’s medical history, avoiding mistakes with medications, dosages, and treatments. However, the traditional methods for identifying HIS requirements focus on specifying functional requirements for the software. Moreover, system scope should be fully understood by stakeholders, such as healthcare workers and hospital managers, something extremely difficult to achieve in practice. As such, many requirements are incomplete, missing, or not needed, leading to expensive and inadequate HIS. The authors identify requirements for Healthcare Information System using Focus Groups. They evaluate this method with experiments, applying a variety of techniques and having encouraging preliminary results. In particular, they verify that stakeholders can reach consensus on high-level requirements by discussing different perspectives about the system scope. The authors conclude that Focus Groups are really effective.


Author(s):  
Oksana Parylo

The overall aim of this chapter is to provide a better understanding of how a specific technique of online research methodology, online focus groups, has been theoretically conceptualized and practically utilized in order to examine its advantages and disadvantages to improve future applications of this technique in qualitative and mixed methods research. The chapter offers an overview of qualitative and mixed methods empirical research using online focus groups in different disciplines and outlines the strengths and weaknesses of this data collection technique. In addition, based on the review of empirical and theoretical research, the current and emerging practices in and characteristics of using online focus groups for data collection are outlined and used to suggest future trends in using this data collection technique in qualitative and mixed methods research.


Author(s):  
Boyd Davis ◽  
Peyton Mason

Social cues in online focus groups surface in the ways group members manipulate language, to signal their attitudinal shifts in position toward the group’s topics and what both moderators and members may have said. Their primary mode is task-based: their “job” is to respond to topics introduced by the focus group moderator; they also engage in “sidebar chat” among themselves. Using stance-shift analysis on a million-word corpus of online text genres, we identify 10 characteristics of online focus group chat, which may help researchers and retailers to identify when and how group participants might be strongly committed to what they have just written.


Author(s):  
Peyton Mason ◽  
Boyd Davis ◽  
Deborah Bosley

In this chapter, we will first discuss what stance is and highlight how we identify and measure stance using multivariate techniques, using an ongoing example taken from an Online Financial Focus Group. We review differences in stance between online real-time focus groups and online chat, as well as between online and face-to-face focus groups; and finally, proffer examples of stance analysis in two very different online focus groups: older adults discussing financial services and teens discussing clothes. As marketers see that online focus groups offer valuable marketing information by understanding the significance of how something is said as well as what is said, their confidence in the use of online focus-group data should increase.


2019 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 160940691988578 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicola Daniels ◽  
Patricia Gillen ◽  
Karen Casson ◽  
Iseult Wilson

Technological advancements and ease of Internet accessibility have made using Internet-based audiovisual software a viable option for researchers conducting focus groups. Online platforms overcome any geographical limitations placed on sampling by the location of potential participants and so enhance opportunities for real-time discussions and data collection in groups that otherwise might not be feasible. Although researchers have been adopting Internet-based options for some time, empirical evaluations and published examples of focus groups conducted using audiovisual technology are sparse. It therefore cannot yet be established whether conducting focus groups in this way can truly mirror face-to-face discussions in achieving the authentic interaction to generate data. We use our experiences to add to the developing body of literature by analyzing our critical reflections on how procedural aspects had the potential to influence the data we collected using audiovisual technology to conduct synchronous focus groups. As part of a mixed methods study, we chose to conduct focus groups in this way to access geographically dispersed populations and to enhance sample variation. We conducted eight online focus groups using audiovisual technology with both academic researchers and health-care practitioners across the four regions of the United Kingdom. A reflexive journal was completed throughout the planning, conduct and analysis of the focus groups. Content analysis of journal entries was carried out to identify procedural factors that had the potential to affect the data collected during this study. Five themes were identified ( Stability of group numbers, Technology, Environment, Evaluation, and Recruitment), incorporating several categories of issues for consideration. Combined with the reflections of the researcher and published experiences of others, suggested actions to minimize any potential impacts of issues which could affect interactions are presented to assist others who are contemplating this method of data collection.


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