Analyzing focus group data with spreadsheets

American Journal of Health Studies, Winter, 2002 by Margaret S. Stockdale

Abstract: Focus groups (FG) are widely used in health research as well as in other disciplines to gain perspectives, enlightenment, and insight into the minds of participants as they discuss topics of interest to the research. The non-quantitative data from focus groups may appear daunting to analyze because strategies vary widely, there are no standardized analytic strategies, and many specialized software packages are difficult or time consuming to learn. This article articulates a strategy for analyzing FG data using widely available and easy-to-learn spreadsheet software.

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A focus group (FG) study is a structured series of group discussions designed to reveal perceptions and opinions on a defined issue involving carefully chosen participants who share common characteristics (Krueger & Casey, 2000). Focus groups are widely used in many forms of applied research including: needs assessment, program evaluation, curriculum development, product/service design, and market research. The "data" from a FG study are verbal comments made by participants in response to the interviewer's (also called a moderator) questions and from other participants' comments as well as the moderator's or other observer's field notes regarding informative nonverbal behavior in the group (e.g., behavior that indicates the extent of agreement, emphasis, boredom, and so forth, group members exhibit in regard to a topic or question). There are many methods available for analyzing FG data discussed in a variety of texts (e.g., Bloor, 2001; Krueger & Casey, 2000; Krueger, King & Morgan, 1998). There are also a fair number of sophisticated software programs available to assist the researcher with data analysis (e.g., QSR NUD*IST, Grahan & Hannibal, 1998; MARTIN, Higgins, 1998; Catterall & MacLaran, 1998). The purpose of this article is to describe how FG data can be analyzed with software that most researchers are familiar with and have access to--spreadsheets--thus reducing the learning curve and increasing the speed with which reports can be prepared.

GOALS OF FOCUS GROUP ANALYSIS

Two primary goals of FG analysis are to: (a) reveal the important themes and their degree of emphasis that underlie participants' comments with regard to the study questions, and (b) to compare these themes across different types of groups. For example, a FG group study on college students' perceptions of tobacco prevention and control campaigns would seek to reveal the themes or categories of comments regarding ideas that may help college students quit smoking. Analysis of FG data may reveal such themes as restricting access to cigarettes, creating more smoke-free environments, addressing concomitant concerns of weight loss and stress reduction, and so forth. Furthermore, comparing themes that arise from FGs with smokers to FGs with nonsmokers may reveal that the former place more emphasis on addressing concomitant concerns whereas the latter stress environmental changes.

With a little planning and foresight, and minimal facility with spreadsheet software commands, FG data are easily organized and analyzed with modern electronic spreadsheet programs. The examples used in this article were prepared with Microsoft[R] Excel from an unpublished focus group study on perceptions of the health insurance gap in the state of Illinois. However, all of the features discussed are available on other commercially available software programs, such as NUD*IST and NVivo.

PREPARING THE DATA

Data from FGs are primarily collected in two forms: field notes and written transcripts. Field notes are notes taken by an observer or assistant moderator who attempts to capture as much of the dialogue among group members and the moderator as possible. If the observer is a facile typist, these notes can be taken on a laptop computer during the meeting, which facilitates transfer of notes to the spreadsheet. Otherwise the field notes must be typed after the meeting. A transcript is a verbatim, typed record of a FG session taken from an audio- or video- (with audio) tape of the meeting. Both field notes and transcripts should be augmented with the moderator's and observer's notes on the important nonverbal behavior that coincided with participants' comments, especially if the nonverbal behavior provides additional information regarding emphasis, agreement/disagreement, confusion, or boredom.

Whether analyzing field notes or transcripts, the final document to be used in the analysis should be a word-processor file containing the following information: (a) group identification code; (b) questions asked in the FG; and (c) participants' responses to each question with nonverbal behavior notes typed in parenthesis in ALL CAPS following the remark(s). If tracing comments to the speaker is important to the study, then their name (or pseudonym) should also follow (or precede) the comment in ALL CAPS. Special formatting techniques to distinguish nonverbal notes or speaker names, such as boldface, italics, or underlining will not transfer to the spreadsheet. The most critical thing to do when preparing the FG notes is to separate each speaker's remarks with a hard return, therefore, making each comment a separate paragraph. When the data are transferred to the spreadsheet, each paragraph will become a Separate cell. Figure 1 provides an example of an excerpt from FG field notes made ready for transfer to a spreadsheet.