Russel-Research-Method-in-Anthropology

234 Chapter 9
Three Cases of Focus Groups
Knodel et al. (1984), for example, used focus groups to study the fertility
transition in Thailand. They held separate group sessions for married men
under 35 and married women under 30 who wanted three or fewer children.
They also held separate sessions for men and women over 50 who had at least
five children. This gave them four separate groups. In all cases, the participants
had no more than an elementary school education.
Knodel et al. repeated this four-group design in six parts of Thailand to
cover the religious and ethnic diversity of the country. The focus of each
group discussion was on the number of children people wanted and why.
Thailand has recently undergone fertility transition, and the focus group
study illuminated the reasons for the transition. ‘‘Time and again,’’ these
researchers report, ‘‘when participants were asked why the younger generation
wants smaller families than the older generation had, they responded that nowadays
everything is expensive’’ (ibid.:302).
People also said that all children, girls as well as boys, needed education to
get the jobs that would pay for the more expensive, monetized lifestyle to
which people were becoming accustomed. It is, certainly, easier to pay for the
education of fewer children. These consistent responses are what you’d expect
in a society undergoing fertility transition.
Ruth Wilson et al. (1993) used focus groups in their study of acute respiratory
illness (ARI) in Swaziland. They interviewed 33 individual mothers, 13
traditional healers, and 17 health care providers. They also ran 33 focus
groups, 16 male groups and 17 female groups. The groups had from 4 to 15
participants, with an average of 7.
Each individual respondent and each group was presented with two hypothetical
cases. Wilson et al. asked their respondents to diagnose each case and
to suggest treatments. Here are the cases:
Case 1. A mother has a 1-year-old baby girl with the following signs: coughing,
fever, sore throat, running or blocked nose, and red or teary eyes. When you ask
the mother, she tells you that the child can breast-feed well but is not actively
playing.
Case 2. A 10-month-old baby was brought to a health center with the following
signs: rapid/difficult breathing, chest indrawing, fever for one day, sunken
eyes, coughing for three days. The mother tells you that the child does not have
diarrhea but has a poor appetite.
Many useful comparisons were possible with the data from this study. For
example, mothers attributed the illness in Case 2 mostly to the weather, hered-