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Using Focus Groups for Community Engagement: Benefit or Bane?

Explore the popularity, value, and challenges of using focus groups for community engagement. Learn best practices for facilitating both focused and unfocused groups, and discover the benefits and disadvantages of an unfocused approach.

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Using Focus Groups for Community Engagement: Benefit or Bane?

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  1. Using Focus Groups for Community Engagement: Benefit or Bane? Nancy Franz-Iowa State University

  2. Dr. Nancy Franz ISU Extension and Outreach Director, Professional Development Professor, School of Education

  3. Nancy’s Background • 32+ years with Extension in five states 4-H agent, volunteer, department head, district liaison, state specialist, project administrator, graduate student, administrator • Youth and adult education in all program areas • Research in TL and E&R community engagement

  4. Overview • Popularity of focus groups for community engagement • People love them • Unfocused group can be invaluable • The topic • The group’s culture • Busy and messy context • Value of the group experience

  5. Overview • Facilitating unfocused groups is art and science • Value of focus groups • Focus group participants • Group facilitation best practices • Facilitation issues • Focus vs. unfocus in groups • Benefits and disadvantages of unfocs

  6. What is a Focus Group? “A carefully planned series of discussions to obtain the perceptions on a defined area of interest in a permissive, nonthreatening environment.” Krueger and Casey, 2009

  7. Value of Focus Groups • Hearing unheard voices • Rich discussion-building on participant comments • Hold each other to experience-based truth • Use alone or with other methods • Gather a lot of info in a short amount of time

  8. Value of Focus Groups • Program or organizational evaluation • Increase participant engagement • Prevent conflict • Enhance innovation and improvement • Enjoyment from the empowering environment-socially appealing

  9. Focus Group Participants • Determines results and usefulness • Common characteristics related to purpose of the conversation • Unfamiliar with each other • 4-12 per group • Multiple groups (3-5)

  10. Facilitation Best Practices • Facilitator skills and background • Respect for participants • Empathy and topic knowledge • Effective communication • Good questioning and listening skills • Ability to control personal skills • Sense of humor • Ability to handle the unexpected

  11. Facilitation Issues • Expect surprises • Prepare for the weather, attendance, the venue, distractions, too much or too little discussion, experts, dominators, shy participants • Timing of questions • Participants perceptions of each other • Cultural issues (norms, history)

  12. Dealing with Issues • Learn about the group and group culture ahead of time • Learn about the venue ahead of time • Use pauses and probes • Prevent persuasion or conversion • Stay away from hot topics • Foster natural discussion

  13. Focus vs. Unfocus in Groups • Mixed advice on staying focused • Focus groups can be hard to control due to social nature of the process • Training and experience help determine when best to control the conversation • Balancing control between the facilitator and the group is an art not science • Use probes to help with balance

  14. Causes of Unfocus • Participants are too diverse • Background noise and critical events in the group culture • Promotion and tenure noise • Budget strains preventing learning from each other • Operations/Service cuts or changes • Poor or inexperienced facilitator

  15. Benefits of Unfocus • Personal reflection • Discovery of new things • Important networking • Introduces new themes/outliers important for the discussion or comparison • Important issues arise • Deeper insights • Learning/release/therapy

  16. Disadvantages of Unfocus • Facilitator gives up some control • Main questions may not get discussed or answered • Minority voices may feel unwelcome/close down • Negative feels/damaged reputation of the host • More difficult data analysis • Impacts on credibility, trustworthiness and transferability • Participant frustration/fatigue • Facilitator frustration/fatigue

  17. Lessons Learned • Help participants connect with each other to build trust before getting unfocused • Facilitator needs to value unfocus benefits and reduce negative aspects of unfocus • Facilitator needs to model co-learning • Embrace the idea of no right or wrong answers • Be careful about power and privilege imbalances

  18. So? What are your experiences with focus groups and community engagement?

  19. Thank you nfranz@iastate.edu

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