Focus Groups and Ethnography
Michael Agar, James E. Macdonald
Human Organization March 1, 1995 DOI: 10.17730/humo.54.1.x102372362631282 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Qualitative study Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Population | Former LSD-using adolescents |
| Keywords | Ethnography Focus optics Focus group Anthropology |
| Citations | 364 |
| Key findings | Integrating focus group transcripts with conversational analysis and broader ethnographic data yields richer understandings than using focus groups alone. |
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.