Focus Group

The second phase of this dissertation study built upon the qualitative method – focus group. “Focus groups are formally organized, structured groups of individuals brought together to discuss a topic

64

or a series of topics during a specific period of time” (Marczyk et al., 2005, p. 154). Firstly widely used in marketing research, such as on product or program development, customer satisfaction, etc., the focus group has evolved into a principal method of qualitative research in academic settings (Krueger & Casey, 2000). Generally, a focus group recruits 6 to 10 participants who have certain characteristics in common that are relevant to a well-defined purpose, and their interactions are guided by a moderator who sets the stage of discussion with prepared questions (Puchta & Potter, 2004).

The focus group participants react to each other in a lively group conversation, investigating the ways they are both similar to and different from each other. They not only need to verbalize what they think, but also have to justify what they say to the peers, especially those different ones. The researchers thus can seek interpretive insights in their comments. At the same time, preceding comments usually establish the context for the following. Through such exchange, a deeper view of the range of participants’ thoughts and experiences will surface (Morgan, 1998). In a mixed methods research design like this one, the significance of the qualitative phase consisted in generating interpretation and providing depth for the quantitative phase. The focus group added to both aspects to the greatest extent in virtue of a unique process of sharing and comparing among the participants.

Specifically speaking, the goal of this focus group study was to collect insiders’ in-depth opinions on Douban users’ information seeking paths as revealed in the clickstream data analysis and online survey. Consequently, how participants would be selected and investigated was determined after the completion of the quantitative phase. Since the ideal candidates of participants were

65

experienced Douban users, a recruiting notice was added to the end of the survey questionnaire form, asking if the respondents were willing to voluntarily participate in a follow-up study, the background of which was introduced (Appendix D).

Among the 129 survey respondents, 11 provided their Email addresses, showing their interest in this focus group. However 3 respondents were screened out because their main purposes of visiting Douban were not looking for resources. After the 8 participants were selected, the researcher contacted them about where, when, and how the follow-up study was going to take place. But one of them never responded, so finally the focus group was a relatively small one comprising 7 participants. The major advantage of smaller groups is that each participant will stand a better chance of talking (Morgan & Scannell, 1998). Since the participants were ready to share personal feelings about their daily interactions with a familiar system, they had a high level of involvement and expertise in the discussion and expected more time to fully express their opinions.

Considering the probable wide geographical distribution of participants, the focus group was conducted online, which also cut the costs associated with the traditional focus group research (Edmunds, 1999). Avoiding face-to-face communication, online chatting maintained the anonymity of participants, possibly increasing the openness during the discussions. It was also very efficient that every word they say is automatically recorded by the software and no transcription was needed. However this approach had its inherent disadvantages. For example, slower typists produce fewer words within a given time whereas they should be able to contribute more if speaking. And emotional cues, such as participants’ facial reactions and tones of voice, are absent (Edmunds, 1999).

66

The entire focus group session lasted about 1.5 hours. All the participants and the moderator (i.e. the researcher) signed in to Windows Live messenger, an instant messaging software application, at the designated time. At the beginning of the session, the moderator briefed the participants on the quantitative phase of this dissertation study and stated the importance of this focus group discussion. The session then proceeded based on a pre-developed questioning route composed of 7 questions. The participants were encouraged to frequently refer to Douban website when making comments in order to evoke their memories about certain experience. The language used by all the individuals involved in the session was also Chinese.

As in Appendix E, the questioning route started with an opening question asking the participants to introduce themselves as Douban users. The intents of this opening question were to help everyone feel comfortable and to get them to talk early in the focus group. The second question aimed to focus participants’ attention on the research issues in a broad sense by asking about their information seeking experience in Douban generally. It moved the discussion towards the key problems of central interest to this focus group study. The first two questions were not analyzed independently. Obviously, the following 5 key questions represented the 5 primary findings obtained from the clickstream data analysis and survey data analysis. The most discussion time was spent on these questions, and the answers they elicit constituted the essential content for later analysis.

In that the data of the focus group was captured in the form of group chat history, the subsequent analysis was transcript based (Krueger & Casey, 2000). The unabridged chatting history from the session was exported from the instant messaging software and saved in a Word document

67

which was then imported into ATLAS.ti29_{, the powerful qualitative data analysis software, for}

content analysis. Content analysis is “a research technique for making replicable and valid inferences from texts (or other meaningful matter) to the contexts of their use” (Krippendorff, 2004, p. 18). It is a data-reduction process in which many words of texts are classified into fewer content categories by human coders or by computer (Weber, 1990). ATLAS.ti perfectly served such purposes by helping the researcher read the transcript, extract and group the related comments for each question discussed in the focus group, make notes on them, code similar or contrasting comments, and develop theories about the quantitative results.