Planning Focus Groups

Author David L. Morgan covers the wide range of practical tasks required in the course of a research project when using focus groups. Throughout, Planning Focus Groups emphasizes the clarifying purposes of the research project in order to collect data that meet the goals. The author extensively and concisely covers the basic decisions that are necessary to plan a research project using focus groups, such as who should be in the groups, the total number of groups, their size, and much more. This volume also features a detailed discussion of timelines, personnel, and budgets. Among the other topics covered are recruitment, selecting locations, and recording and managing data. Practical material includes checklists, recruitment tools, timelines, and budgets.

David L. Morgan received his PhD in sociology from the University of Michigan, and is currently an emeritus professor in the Department of Sociology at Portland State University. He is an inter-disciplinary research methodologist, working in both qualitative research and mixed methods research. In addition to artificial intelligence, his research interests include focus groups and mixed methods research. He is the author of more than fifty peer-reviewed articles and author or editor of nine books on research methods; he is currently the series editor for the Qualitative Research Methods Series from Sage (the “little blue books”).