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| Students Speak Toolkit > II. The Focus Group Blueprint > A. Design > 14. Make decisions about focus group recording and analysis. |
Although you will probably have a subcommittee of work team members who will be responsible for the bulk of the analysis, the entire work team needs to be involved in some key decisions about recording and analyzing the focus groups (especially since this is largely an issue of $$$).
Your work team needs to figure out a way to obtain the most complete and
accurate record of the students' conversations as possible.
Primary Recommendations
Tape record the focus groups using high-quality recording equipment,
including a tape recorder and a table microphone. Produce professional-quality
verbatim transcripts of each group.
Recording
You may be able to rent a recorder and table microphone from a local recording studio. Rental fees generally run between $30 and $100 a day, depending on the quality of the equipment. Another alternative is to work with any high-quality recording equipment or technology available at your school. If you are considering school equipment, try it out in a conversational setting with a few students for five minutes or so, and then see if the resulting tape is clear enough to use for extracting verbatim quotes.
If your school or school system plans to replicate the focus group process many times, you might consider investing in your own high-quality tape recorder and table microphone. Such high-tech equipment costs approximately $400. (We understand that this might not be an affordable option for many school systems.)
Whatever recording method you choose, make sure you can cover all the dates and times for your focus groups. That is, if you can afford to rent only two recording devices, make sure that you do not have more than two focus groups scheduled at one time and that you leave plenty of time to shuffle recording equipment from one site to another.
IMPORTANT: While your recording strategy may seem like a simple decision, it's really quite critical. Much of the value of your groups will be lost if you do not have an accurate record of what transpired during the conversations. Since one of the main purposes of focus group research is to hear students talk about issues in their own words, you should select a recording strategy that will give you as much access to verbatim quotes as possible.
Transcripts
If your work team has the time and resources, we highly recommend that you
find someone to transcribe the tapes from the focus group sessions. Professional
transcripts provide the best written record of the conversations and allow
researchers to capture participants' comments verbatim. Transcripts also help
significantly with analysis. A decent transcriber generally charges $12 to
$15 per hour; a two-hour tape usually requires six to eight hours of work.
Be sure to get verbatim transcripts from the focus groups. This way, you will be sure to accurately quote participants and understand the context of their responses. Your transcriber should remove all participants' names and any references to specific people or places. This ensures participant anonymity and removes the possibility of bias on the part of the analysts towards one participant or another.
View samples of professional-quality verbatim transcripts from two student focus groups. (Note: These excerpts have been pulled from different points in the focus groups.) In the transcripts:
If you do not have the time or resources to obtain professional transcripts, members of the analysis team should instead produce verbatim notes from the sessions. Members should listen to the tapes from the sessions on their own time and take careful notes, capturing as much of the participants' own language as possible.
Another note-taking option involves implementing the strategy we used in Jessamine County: As the trained student facilitators conducted the focus group session, a senior researcher sat outside the room and listened in on headphones that were connected to a tape recorder inside the classroom. This arrangement allowed the senior researcher to take notes on the conversation and do some "quick and dirty analysis." When using this immediate field note approach, it is imperative that the note-taker fill in gaps and make full notes from each session as soon as possible after the session concludes. Though the session that has just concluded may seem etched indelibly in your mind, all distinctions and insights will begin to blur after you have listened to several focus groups. The only defense against this is to complete good notes immediately after each session.
Note: If you are listening to tapes from groups in your own school, you will need to be extra cautious about keeping all identities confidential.
You will need to find a balance between adult presence and adult dominance or authority during the focus groups. For the purposes of analysis and facilitator support, it's important that at least one site manager and perhaps a member of the analysis team be on hand while the focus group is taking place in order to consult with the facilitators as necessary and handle any other problems. The presence of these adults will also let the student participants know that they are expected to behave appropriately. Both the site manager and analysis team member must remain outside the room, however, since adult presence within the room might distract or deter the participants or otherwise influence their responses. This is particularly true for the middle school or high school groups. The facilitators should tell the participants in the group about any adults who are sitting outside the room.
If you are particularly concerned about facilitator support or possible behavioral problems, you can imitate our approach in Jessamine County. There, a senior researcher listened to the conversation on headphones while sitting just outside the room. Facilitators disclosed the researchers' presence to the student participants as part of the opening remarks in each session. This permitted the senior researcher to provide coaching and support for facilitators at two prearranged points in each session, without distracting the student participants. At a specific moment, one facilitator stepped out of the classroom to consult with the senior researcher about the need to make any adjustments in either the questions or the group engagement practices the facilitation team was using. If necessary, researchers also could have intervened directly in the facilitation process.
No other adults - that is, anyone other than site managers or analysis team members - should be present in any way during the focus groups, unless, of course, your facilitator is an adult.
Next: Plan your next steps.
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