The Focus Group Research Handbook is a comprehensive guide to contracting with a market research vendor to create a customized focus group study for your business or organization. Author Holly Edmunds thoroughly explains and simplifies the methodology of focus group studies, and comprehensively outlines the steps you'll need to follow to implement and then analyze focus group research. From designing research vendor questionnaires, to selecting an effective moderator, from analyzing results to turning those results into workplace gains, this book will provide you with all the tools and tips you'll need to simplify the focus group process.

As one of the most popular tools for gathering information in today's marketplace focus groups require understanding of purpose and good grounding in the technique to be effective. In The Handbook for Focus Group Research, Second Edition Tom Greenbaum provides the latest information on conducting effective focus groups.

A handbook covering the essentials for all the stage of focus group implementation, including designing and conducting a targeted focus group study selecting the proper research facility, and analysing and incorporating results into the decision making process.

`I read this book in a single sitting. It is written in an enthusiastic, helpful and clear style that held my attention, and made me want to read what came next. I shall read it again in a single sitting - probably more than once. For it offers common-sense advice about planning and running focus groups which I will want to revisit′ - British Journal of Education Technology The Third Edition of the `standard′ for learning how to conduct a focus group contains: a new chapter comparing and contrasting market research, academic, nonprofit and participatory approaches to focus group research; expanded descriptions on how to plan focus group studies and do the analysis, including step-by-step procedures; examples of questions that ask participants to do more than just discuss, and suggestions on how to answer questions about your focus group research.

In highlighting the unique features of focus groups, Cyr explains how they can help social science researchers effectively answer certain research questions.

Volume 4 of this series is indispensable for all wishing to improve their focus group moderating skills. This book provides an overview of critical skills needed by moderators, the skills moderators use, & strategies for handling difficult situations.

Publisher description

The Focus Group Guide book is part of the six-volume Focus Group Kit, which offers the information needed to conduct a state-of-the-art focus group, from the initial planning stages through to analysing and reporting the data.

Organized into six practical sections relating theory to application from an historical perspective, this text offers contributions from international scholars and practitioners who reflect the diversity of this field.

This book critically examines the potential of, and suggests ways forward in, harnessing a versatile and powerful method of research - focus groups. The book challenges some of the emerging orthodoxies and presents accessible, insightful and reflective discussions about the issues around focus group work. The contributors, an impressive group of experienced researchers from a range of disciplines and traditions, discuss different ways of designing, conducting and analyzing focus group research. They examine sampling strategies; the implications of combining focus groups with other methods; accessing views of `minority' groups; their contribution to participatory or feminist research; use of software packages; discourse anal