RESEARCH METHOD COHEN ok

376 INTERVIEWS
get beyond the institutional, headteacher’s or
‘expected’ response
keep children to the point
avoid children being too extreme or destructive
of each other’s views
pitch language at the appropriate level
avoid the interview being an arduous bore
overcome children’s poor memories
avoid children being too focused on particular
features or situations
avoid the situation where the child will say ‘yes’
to anything (‘acquiescence bias’) addressed,
for example, by avoiding ‘yes/no’ questions in
favour of open-ended questions
overcome the situation of the child saying
anything in order to please
overcome the proclivity of some children to say
that they ‘don’t know’, or simply shrug their
shoulders and remain silent
overcome the problem that some children will
say anything rather than feel they do not have
‘the answer’
overcome the problem that some children
dominate the conversation
avoid the problem of children feeling very
exposed in front of their friends
avoid children feeling uncomfortable or
threatened (addressed, perhaps, by placing
children with their friends)
avoid children telling lies.
Clearly these problems are not exclusive to
children; they apply equally well to some adult
group interviews. Group interviews require skilful
chairing and attention to the physical layout of
the room so that everyone can see everyone else.
Group size is also an issue; too few and it can
put pressure on individuals, too large and the
group fragments and loses focus. Lewis (1992)
summarizes research to indicate that a group of
around six or seven is an optimum size, though it
can be smaller for younger children. The duration
of an interview may not be for longer than, at most,
fifteen minutes, and it might be useful to ensure
that distractions are kept to a minimum. Simple
language to the point and without ambiguity (e.g.
avoiding metaphors) is important.
Focus groups
As an adjunct to group interviews, the use of focus
groups is growing in educational research, albeit
more slowly than, for instance, in business and
political circles. Focus groups are a form of group
interview, though not in the sense of a backwards
and forwards between interviewer and group.
Rather, the reliance is on the interaction within
the group who discuss a topic supplied by the
researcher (Morgan 1988: 9), yielding a collective
rather than an individual view. Hence the
participants interact with each other rather than
with the interviewer, such that the views of the
participants can emerge – the participants’ rather
than the researcher’s agenda can predominate.
It is from the interaction of the group that the
data emerge. Focus groups are contrived settings,
bringing together a specifically chosen sector of the
population to discuss a particular given theme or
topic, where the interaction with the group leads
to data and outcomes. Their contrived nature is
both their strength and their weakness: they are
unnatural settings yet they are very focused on a
particular issue and, therefore, will yield insights
that might not otherwise have been available in
astraightforwardinterview;theyareeconomical
on time, producing a large amount of data in a
short period of time, but they tend to produce
less data than interviews with the same number
of individuals on a one-to-one basis (Morgan
1988: 19).
Focus groups (Krueger 1988; Morgan 1988:
Bailey 1994: 192–3; Robson 2002: 284–5) are
useful for
orienting to a particular field of focus
developing themes, topic and schedules
flexibly for subsequent interviews and/or
questionnaires
generating hypotheses that derive from the
insights and data from the group
generating and evaluating data from different
subgroups of a population
gathering qualitative data
generating data quickly and at low cost
gathering data on attitudes, values and
opinions