Facilitating focus group discussions

In Chapter 4 in the book, we attend both to individual interviews and to focus group discussions. The exercises in that chapter and in these online materials allow you to develop skills in and insights into individual interviewing. It is less straightforward to practise facilitating focus group discussions because you need to find a group of people who are willing to take part in a practice discussion and then co-ordinate them to assemble in a specific place at a specific time.

To give you a sense of what it might be like to facilitate focus group discussions, in the video below Haaris Ilyas and Kane Davidson reflect on their fieldwork experience. For their BSc dissertations, they conducted a qualitative study about understandings, outlooks and experiences of interfaith engagement among young British Muslims from a Pakistani heritage. They generated the data in four focus group discussions. They analysed the data using thematic analysis and interpreted their findings in terms of relevant social psychological concepts.

Haaris Ilyas and Kane Davidson are graduates of Kingston University London. Haaris has worked in the IT sector since graduating with a BSc in 2016. After his BSc, Kane obtained an MSc in Clinical Applications of Psychology from Kingston University London and is currently working in the mental health field.