Evaluation of focus group for Main Task

In order, for my group to have a focus group we had to match consent forms which are shown on previous blog post. This allowed our participants to understand what they were taking part in which made it ethical as we were given on consent therefore not putting participant under pressure as such.

We, meaning my group and I, collaborated together to discuss who we wanted to add into our focus group, we decided we’d like to have both males and females so the answers weren’t bias. We believed it was important to add males and females so we could collect a variety of answers and not just males giving their opinions or vice versa, this therefore helped to have a range of answers as well as according to their gender.

Our focus group size was also big as it was a focus group of 11 people, this was important to have a big group as it allowed us to get a variety of thoughts and opinions across others. This was also useful as it helped other participants who weren’t necessarily speaking to get involved as they may have disagreed with what their friend may have said and therefore expressed their own opinion or explain why they thought others were wrong.

Along, with our focus group, Jess and I believed it was important for us to be asking questions therefore we were both able to pick up each other’s mistakes, as well as this it also allowed our questions to be in more detailed as we were using 2 brains to ask the questions than one. Essentially we were both there to help if one got stuck in answering or adding on to a participants answer. I believe this was a good way of asking and finding out answers because it showed we both worked well together whilst Beth was recording us as we went along.

We were happy with the final outcome as everyone contributed at least once and if we saw a person looked uncomfortable, we discretely directed a question at them in order to allow everyone in our focus group to give their opinion. Also, we believe our focus group was successful as we had structured but open questions that we asked and we managed to ask every question and get a appropriate answer to all. This was useful as it helped us to come to conclusions such as the name of title and how the main character or other characters should dress, also by using structured questions implies you won’t go off topic because there is a sat format so open questions are allowed as it provides qualitative data to collect which is a more detailed way of collecting data.

However, our focus group were talkative at times which effected our filming as its very hard to sometimes understand what participants are saying, this therefore makes it hard for us as a group to use this source of filming because we find it hard to understand. So, in the future if I were to do a focus group again id make sure participants weren’t talking over one another. I’d put this into place by adding a policy of what is expected of them in a consent form so they were aware of how to behave.

Also, if I were to do the focus group again id spent more time on creating questions in order to get accurate and detailed responses to questions. As this would be much more helpful when coming to planning the main task and will help my group and I understand what is expected from our target audience to create the best possible opening sequence that we possibly could.

Overall, I am quite impressed with my focus group as it helped my group and I to make final decisions on what we were unsure on, filming the focus group is also very useful as when in doubt we can always relate back to the filming to have a greater understanding of what the participant is aiming to express than if they were to answer the questions in a written format.