Claudia Puchta

Focus Group Practice

Focus Groups and Interaction Producing Informality Producing Participation Producing Opinions Producing Useful Opinions Producing Varied Opinions From Practice to Strategy

Asking elaborate questions: Focus groups and the management of spontaneity

This paper analyzes question formats in a corpus of German market research focus groups. In particular, it identifies and studies the use of ‘elaborate questions’ (questions which include a range of reformulations and rewordings). The analysis highlights three functions of such questions in focus groups: (a) they are used to guide participants and head off trouble where the question type is ‘non-mundane’; (b) they help secure participation by providing an array of alternative items to respond to; (c) they guide participants to produce a range of opinion relevant responses. More generally, they help manage a dilemma between the requirement that the talk should be both highly focused on predefined topics and issues, and at the same time spontaneous and conversational. The analysis provides a range of interactional evidence for the pragmatic role of these formats.

Repeat receipts: a device for generating visible data in market research focus groups

Market research focus groups generate three types of data: first, representatives of commissioning companies or organizations watch the group from behind a one-way mirror; second, they receive a video of the group discussion; third, they are given a report of the focus group. This article analyses how the required data are interactionally produced to be visible for the people behind the one-way screen, for the video and for the report. It describes the phenomenon of repeat receipts as a central device for producing visible data. Repeat receipts are sequences where the moderator repeats participants’contributions, typically with intonational cues that mark completion. Repeat receipts have several functions. They can (a) highlight central market-research relevant terms from participants’responses; (b) strip off rhetorical relations by repeating utterances in a decontextualized manner; (c) summarize contributions in repeating contributions of different authors as if of one voice; (d) cover conflict in repeating potentially contradictory contributions as discrete statements; (e) socialize responding by providing templates for the required contributions. Repeat receipts help shape the focus group interaction to generate visible data for the overhearing audience, the video and the report. The article ends with a comparison of repeats in market research focus groups, standardized surveys and news interviews.

Mind, mousse and moderation

This chapter is about the ways that psychology appears in, and is used in, the process of research. More particularly we will be considering the way psychological terms, orientations, constructions, and displays are manifest, and practically drawn on, in market research focus groups. This study reflects a broader concern with what psychology is for in the different practices, everyday and institutional, intimate and public, that it appears. The interest here is to contribute to the literature on method as an interactional and discursive accomplishment and at the same time to contribute to the broader literature of discursive psychology. We will start with some comments on the general approach of discursive psychology and then consider research on the interactional accomplishment of research methods.

Diskursanalysen institutioneller Gespräche — das Beispiel von ‚Focus Groups‘

Die Beschaftigung mit institutionellen Gesprachen stellt eine konsequente Weiterentwicklung der konversationsanalytisch orientierten Diskursanalyse dar. Es geht dabei um die Untersuchung jener methodischen Prozeduren, die Gesprachsteilnehmer einsetzen, um bestimmte praktische Aufgaben zu erledigen bzw. Handlungen zu bewerkstelligen, die mit ihrer Teilnahme an institutionellen Handlungssituationen in Verbindung stehen (wie z.B. unterrichten, Krankengeschichten erheben, jemand ins Kreuzverhor nehmen, eine Prufung durchfuhren oder interviewen). Zu diesem Zweck wird eine ganze Palette linguistischer Ressourcen in den Blick genommen — lexikalische, syntaktische, prosodische, sequentielle etc. -, die von den Gesprachspartnern mobilisiert werden konnen „for accomplishing the interactional work of institutions“ (Drew/Sorjonen 1997: 92).