Section 3: This section will teach novice researchers:

1. The advantages and limitations of qualitative data collection strategies such as participant observation, qualitative interviewing, focus groups, and life history interviewing.
2. The benefits of including qualitative data collection strategies in research, including studies using a community-based participatory research (CBPR) approach.
3. How to develop protocols for conducting various types of qualitative data collection.
4. How to document these data.
5. How to collect qualitative data in a systematic manner and in a way that integrates quality control mechanisms.

Example of what you will find in this section:

Conducting and documenting focus groups

Conducting focus groups. As previously mentioned, the focus groups should be comprised of 6 to 12 members with similar demographic characteristics who do not know one another. Settings for focus groups are also important. The settings should insure privacy to protect the confidentiality and anonymity of participants, and they should be places that will help the participants feel as comfortable as possible and are easy to access. The settings should have been addressed during the initial stakeholders meeting and the pre-research conducted on the target community.

Probes, or ways of stimulating the interviewee to add more information, are used in focus groups as they are used in qualitative interviews. At times these probes may be specific follow-up questions in the focus group guide, or they may just be worded as follows — “probe for [topic] and [topic].”

Documenting focus groups. Members of the implementation team should plan on using more than one facilitator for the group. One facilitator might act as a “recorder” and take notes while the other introduces the topics or questions. Tape or video recorders should be used to document the dialogue (with back-up notes). Check with audio/video suppliers for the appropriate microphones to record all voices. If confidentiality and/or anonymity are issues that need to be addressed, the video- and audiotapes should be destroyed as soon as the tapes are transcribed (although videotaping is not a good option where confidentiality/anonymity must be maintained).

The recorder taking notes might want to place numbers in front of the participants in the form of place cards. Then the recorder can take notes such as the following: “#1 replied that he had used a Family Service counseling service in the past week. #9 said he’d used the same service. #3 and #6 said they had used a different counseling service. #3 could not recall the name of the service, but #6 said he’d used a service at the Forest Avenue Clinic.” This format keeps the speaker anonymous and will help the transcriber identify who is speaking, particularly where the transcription is done from audiotapes.