Ravalier PhD Theis.pdf - Anglia Ruskin Research Online

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organisational management the opportunity to scrutinise and discuss the outcomes. Additionally focus groups take
a great deal of time and effort to organise, run, and transcribe, and logistically bringing a group of 6-10 people at
the same time and the same place can be extremely difficult (Howitt & Cramer, 2007). This disadvantage was
overcome by ensuring that PAO management and human resources department allowed individuals to put their job
roles aside for the time of the focus group without any retribution. A further potential weakness pertains to the
representativeness of findings – because of the limited number of participants in focus groups, and the limited
number of groups themselves which can be undertaken, the generalisabiltiy of the information obtained to the
more general population is lacking (Vogt, King & King, 2004). This further disadvantage can also be well countered
with respect to the current study - despite just 13 participants taking part in the focus group interviews overall,
they were representative of many of the various job roles across organisational sites within Service 6.
Certain topics and/or populations may not lend themselves to focus group discussion (Vogt, King & King,
2004). For example, discussing the results of certain medical trials with participants may have certain issues.
Additionally, both participants and the researcher have the potential to impact and influence findings. Leading and
biased questioning, attitude of the moderator and having one particularly dominant participant can each adversely
affect the outcome of focus group studies (Vogt, King & King, 2004). Byers et al. (2002) point out the potential
problem that can occur due to group interactions, such as producing conformity pressures which may distort the
individuals’ genuine perception of events, or simply limit the information that individuals are willing to provide.
There are, however, several things that the researcher can do it minimise many of these potential problems.
First of all, a good level of training for the moderators would limit some of the issues such as having the potential
to deal with dominant members of the group, showing how their points have been taken into consideration while