Focus Groups and Ethnography

Focus groups are increasingly used in applied social research. Two anthropologist-ethnographers demonstrate how a focus group with former LSD-using adolescents, when analyzed with conversational analysis techniques and interpreted as indexes of broader folk-models drawn from other ethnographic data, produces deeper insights than focus groups used alone. The authors show that integrating focus group transcripts with additional ethnographic evidence yields richer understandings of participants' perspectives and cultural models.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Focus groups continue to grow in popularity as a method of applied social research. The two authors, anthropologically trained ethnographers, show how a particular focus group with former LSD-using adolescents dovetailed with other ethnographic data. By looking at a focus group transcript using a simplified version of techniques in conversational analysis, and by interpreting the utterances as indexes of more comprehensive folk-models derived from other data, focus groups yield richer understandings than a simple stand-alone use can provide.