Fundamentos de una pedagogía y educación para la paz

A focus group is a form of unstructured interview but with more than one subject (Bryman, 1988; Patton, 2002). Focus group discussions provide important advantages in qualitative research by making data collection cost-effective (e.g. interviewing a large number of people within a short period of time), improving data quality through checks and balances among the different views of participants,

assessing consistency of views among subjects, and making data collection enjoyable for subjects (Patton, 2002: 386). Moris and Copestake (1993) suggested that community-level focus group discussions can be an effective method of data collection, especially within the context of rural development projects or programmes that have worked with, or through, community groups. Killough (2003) used this method in a case study of farmer-led extension programmes in Latin America.

Focus group discussion was crucial for this study for a number of reasons. First, there were around 3,500 rural people organised in 72 village groups, each having 10-25 members. These groups were located in different communities. Given the time and budget, it was not possible to travel to these different communities and individually interview a comprehensive number of the farmers involved with the project. Second, although key informant interviews were undertaken with the farmer promoters and group leaders, it was necessary to cross-check the views of other group members. Third, since in the project a group approach had been used, an understanding of the group dynamics was necessary. Focus group discussion was not necessary in the case of the other stakeholders, that is, the field-level extension workers, managers, and project coordinators, as they were limited in number. Therefore, in-depth individual interviews were found to be more suitable for them.

Morgan (1988) recommended undertaking more than one focus group discussion since one FGD may simply result in the researcher’s observing the dynamics of a single group. In this study, a total of seven FGDs were carried out with the rural people who participated in the FLE project. The number of FGDs was limited to seven for three major reasons. First, it was extremely difficult for the investigator to convince a good number of the rural people to participate in the research (explanation follows). Second, interviews with eight farmer promoters from different FLE groups (Table 3.4) had already generated some information about those groups. Thirdly, after completing seven FGDs, the investigator realised that no new concepts were emerging from the process.

The participants in the FGDs included the farmer promoters, the group leaders, and the common farmers or community members. However, it was not possible to organise separate FGDs for each of these categories of people. The number of

participants in each FGD ranged from 6 to 8. Purposive sampling was used in selecting the communities and the groups (Killough, 2003; Patton, 2002). Three important criteria were considered in the selection: (i) gender of the farmers as the project involved groups of both men and women farmers (ii) extent of urbanisation of the Upazillas and communities where the groups were located, and (iii) groups that survived during the post-project period versus those that did not; since a few groups in some communities survived during the post-project period (source: personal observation). These criteria were developed after the data collection process began. However, although there were considerable variations among the rural people in terms of socioeconomic profiles (see Box 3.1, section 3.4.1.4) such as income, farm size, education, and so on, it was not possible to organise separate FGDs based on these criteria. Table 3.5 summarises the number of the FLE groups involved in FGDs, including the criteria used in their selection.

Table 3.5 Criteria used in selecting village groups for FGDs

Total groups involved in

project

Total groups interviewed

Criteria used in group selection

Gender Urbanisation of project sites Active vs. inactive 72 7 Male – 3 Female – 4 High – 4 Moderate – 2 Low – 1 Active – 3 Inactive – 4

To organise a FGD, an advance contact was made with the respective group leaders or promoters in the communities. The names and locations of these people were obtained from the project documents, with further assistance from the relevant fieldworkers of the DAE and the FLE-NGO. However, convincing people to participate in the FGDs was very difficult and time-consuming. Initially, the rural people assumed that the investigator was an employee of the FLE project or was working for the donor/extension agencies. Many of them thought that the purpose of the investigator was to evaluate the project and based on this evaluation, they would receive further assistance. When the identity of the investigator and his purpose were explained to the rural people, many of them became reluctant to participate in the research. It was because of this problem that the investigator was unable to employ more participatory methods of data collection such as various

PRA methods9 and resorted only to FGDs. To convince the rural people to participate in the FGDs, assistance from some local acquaintances (community members) and the relevant DAE and FLE-NGO personnel was obtained. In spite of taking assistance from the DAE and the NGO personnel, however, the investigator attempted to ensure that they were not present during the discussions.

The FGDs were held as per the preferred date and time given by the initial contact persons in the FLE communities. In most cases, the discussions took place in the house premises of those contact persons. In some communities, the Extension Service Centres (ESCs) developed through the project were used to hold the discussions.

At the beginning of each discussion, the participants were given a detailed description of the purpose of the discussion including the identity of the investigator. This was important to avoid misconceptions, as discussed earlier. After a detailed description of the purpose of the study and the identity of the investigator, it was expected that the misconceptions held by the rural people were minimised.

To carry out the discussion, a set of questions was developed based on guidelines from the conceptual framework as outlined in Chapter 2 (see Appendix A). The questions were gradually introduced to the group and their opinions were sought. The investigator did not seek consensus (Patton, 2002) but encouraged the participants to freely express their opinions. Although questioning and counter- questioning of ideas and opinions were encouraged, attempts were made to avoid sensitive issues that were likely to lead to conflicts among participants and hence a deadlock situation.

The outcome of each focus group discussion was recorded in detail by the investigator. However, since he had no assistant, each of the focus group discussions was also tape recorded. It took around one and a half to two hours to complete one group discussion. At the end of each discussion, the outcome of the discussion was presented to the group to check if there were any mistakes, any suggestions or amendments to make.

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During the course of the discussion, it was noticed that some of the members were too shy to talk or were hesitant to talk. A list of those people was prepared by the investigator and later they were informally interviewed to seek their opinion on the outcome of the discussion. For this purpose, the investigator had to return to the community after a couple of days.