Analyze the focus groups.

Once members of the analysis team have had enough time to listen to the tapes or read the transcripts from their assigned session(s) - and they have generated fairly polished drafts of notes - the entire analysis team should meet to share findings and to discuss areas of agreement and disagreement, patterns of responses, common themes, etc. The report writers should take careful notes during this session. You can organize the discussion around the interview and research questions, or use the questions presented earlier as talking points for the group's discussion. See a sample agenda for the meeting.

Here are some additional considerations for your conversation:

• Place greater value on specific responses made in the first person than on more abstract responses made in the third person. For example, give more weight to statements like "I feel safe at school because..." than to the comment "Most kids probably feel safe at school."

• Look for the big ideas. They are likely to emerge after a lot of digging for the description, then the interpretation, and after some time passes. Ultimately, the real inner patterns reveal themselves, and that's where you get some real "ahas."

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Some of these ideas came from Richard A. Krueger, Focus Groups: A Practical Guide for Applied Research. Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1988; and Richard A. Krueger, Analyzing and Reporting Focus Group Results. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1998.

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Next: Prepare a report.