Focus Group Interview

The focus group interview is one of the methods used to collect data from participants in this study. A focus group is one of the qualitative research techniques and involves interviews on specific topics with a small group of people. Masaded (2012) succinctly define a focus group as:

A group of interacting individuals having some common interests or characteristics, brought together by a moderator who uses the group and its interview as a way to gain information about a specific or focused issue ( Masaded, 2012:66-67).

Focus group discussions were chosen for this research study because transformation of higher education encourages academics, as actors, to write their own experiences about institutional and structural conditions which affect transformation. Also, group

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interviews provided opportunities for data to be collected from participants during a limited number of interviews.

Hancock (2002:10) puts the point so well thus ―group interviews can be used when limited resources prevent more than a small number of interviews being undertaken.‖ Focus group interviews rely heavily upon systematic questioning of several individuals simultaneously in a formal or informal setting (Denzin and Lincoln, 2003). As with academic participants, focus group discussions included ‗those who might know‘ (Pawson and Tilley 1997:159-160) in order to capture ―voices‖ of those who are in the forefront of driving activities related to academic staff development activities. In case study institution X, five group discussants were identified comprising 3 chairpersons, a coordinator of postgraduate studies and a teaching development practitioner. In this group one was a woman and lecturing experience ranged between 5 years to 13 years.

In case study institution Y, all group discussants were chairpersons who were members of the university Teaching and Learning Committee. In this group, two were women and their lecturing experience ranged from 3 years to 15 years. In both case study institutions, discussants were identified on the basis of interest in the study apart from their responsibilities linked to academic staff development in departments.

The researcher placed participants for the focus group in formal settings. The method gave participants an opportunity to add their voice to the issue of academic professional development in higher education institutions in Zimbabwe. However, ―the intent of focus groups is not to infer, but to determine the range, not to make statements about population but to provide insights about how people perceive a situation‖ (Masaded, 2012:64). In order to improve the dependability and trustworthiness of the data collected, ―focus group interviews should be used with other data collection techniques (Thomas and Nelson, 2001:337).

In this study, data from focus groups were triangulated with data collected using personal interviews and semi-structured questionnaires.

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3.6.2.1 Advantages of the group interview

Some advantages associated with the group interview have been identified by some scholars. Thomas and Nelson (2001:36) note that focus group discussion ―can be an efficient data collection technique because the researcher can gather information about several people in one session‖. Marczak and Sewell (2007:3) also noted that focus group interviews ―provide data more quickly and at a lower cost than if individuals are interviewed separately‖. Given limited funding, the use of focus group interviews might enable collection of adequate data economically. Focus groups also provide quality controls because participants tend to provide checks and balances on each other and can counter false or extreme views (Thomas and Nelson, 2001:337). Masaded (2007:66) on the other hand also point out that people naturally interact in focus group discussions and that helps to increase the pace of the data.

Focus group interviews also allow the researcher to interact with respondents and that allows for clarification; follow up questions and probing (Maczak and Sewell, 2007). In addition, focus group interviews allow the researcher to gain information from non- verbal responses to supplement or even contradict verbal responses. Use of focus group interviews is also emphasized by critical theorists because data is reflected in the respondents‘ own words and deeper levels of meaning can be identified (Thomas and Nelson, 2001; Marczak and Sewell, 2007). In this study, focus group interviews were beneficial. Rich data was collected that corroborated or contradicted data collected through interviews and questionnaires. There is clear evidence of this in chapter 4. Given these advantages, collection of detailed rich data from group interviews in connection with conditions that affect implementation of academic professional development in higher education institutions was likely. However, there are some limitations associated with the focus group interview method. These limitations are raised below.

3.6.2.2 Disadvantages of a focus group interview

One limitation noted by Thomas and Nelson (2001) of the focus group interview is that ―some may be reluctant to state their views in public or there

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may be power struggles in the group and this may spoil the discussion (2001:337). Marczak and Sewell (2007) have summarised the limitations of focus group discussions as follows:

 Interviewer has less control of what information will be produced and this results in the production of chaotic data whose analysis is difficult.

 Moderator may knowingly or unknowingly bias results by providing cues about what types of responses are desirable.

 Small members and convenience sampling severely limit the ability to generalize to larger populations.

 Uncertainty about accuracy of what participants say and results may be biased by presence of a very dominant or opinioned member and more reserved members may be hesitant to talk (Marczak and Sewell, 2007:4).

In this study, group discussants in both case study institutions were free to express their views independently with a lot of interest. However, in case study institution X discussants portrayed superiority of their disciplines in the debates in some instances. However, the researcher was quick to moderate the discussion to remain on focus. Also in this study, the researcher had reasonable control of group discussion through guided questioning, a skill developed through pilot study. In order to minimise these limitations and to increase trustworthiness and dependability of the data collected through triangulation of data from focus groups with data collected through other data collection methods namely personal interviews and questionnaires. The questionnaire method is one of the data collection methods used in this study and discussed below.

3.6.3 Questionnaire method

The semi-structured questionnaire method is the survey method used to collect data. Semi-structured questionnaires are among the range of qualitative methods of data collection (Thomas and Nelson, 2001). French (1993:66) also highlights that ―if you want to learn about people‘s deepest thoughts on some topic a semi-structured