Instalación correcta en cuanto a EMC

Education and Social Research Institute, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK

Key concepts

Everyone thinks they know something about inter-viewing – and quite rightly too! The media images are everywhere. There are the crime series which show the rough, tough, police officer interrogating the suspect to find the ‘truth’. There is the image of the psychiatrist during a clinical interview delving into the mind of the client to uncover repressed realities.

There is the job selection committee interviewing a candidate who puts on a performance to present the best image possible. Then there is the reporter interviewing a politician trying to dig out a clear, unambiguous statement. And, as a final image, there is the street survey where ‘random’ passers-by are interviewed for their views about some topic of the day, product or service.

Implicit in our images of interviews are a number of key concepts that fundamentally impact on their utility as methods to be employed by researchers:

( the ‘messiness’ of encounters with others;

( the ‘performances’ of those engaged in communi-cation;

( the level of ‘commitment’ to being engaged in communication;

( ‘truth’;

( ‘reality’;

( ‘suspicion’;

( the hidden agendas at play;

( the tactics and strategies employed to ‘unearth’

information;

This list is not exhaustive. However, it is indicative of the problem: what status can we give to the words of the other?

Unfortunately, it does not stop there. Take the example of the investigative reporter interviewing an informant who is in fear of losing a job, or indeed of being injured or killed if found out, but who feels it is right to tell others what it means to live and work within a given organization. Knowledge is power. But those who leak ‘knowledge’ that others wish to remain silenced are in positions of great vulnerability.

In a group situation certain voices may also be muted.

And when the statements are printed, they are taken out of the lived context and placed into another – the public domain, the domain where words are twisted, given alternative meanings, ‘interpreted’ in the light of other evidence. Investigations and pressure may be brought to bear to find the ‘informant’ – will the cloak be lifted? Think too of the pressures that may bear upon a focus group member whose views are clearly out of step with the majority in the group – there is the temptation to conceal those views, or, for some, there may be the temptation to play the radical outsider and give wildly exaggerated opinions.

What about focus groups? They’ve attained un-precedented popularity with researchers. Politicians and marketing consultants love them, and with New Labour in the UK endlessly using them to gauge public opinion, they have become a household term.

We all discuss and debate in a variety of groups and, to some extent, we all possess some of the skills required to moderate or participate in focus group discussions, whether we chair committee meetings, run or take part in workshops or attend dinner parties. There can be a downside to the over-enthusiastic use of any method (Krueger, 1993), and this is particularly the case with focus groups con-vened in order to inform policy decisions, which may as a result be based on little more than a whim arising

from views expressed in hastily convened brainstorm-ing sessions. However, their increasbrainstorm-ing use by re-searchers is well justified as they can access group norms and provide insights into the formation of views which cannot be so readily achieved via individual interviews. Additionally they often give facilitators the chance to observe how individuals within groups react to the views of others and seek to defend their own views.

Taking such thoughts as these into account, the key concepts can be refined as:

1 Power – the power structures that are the context to the exchange taking place between interviewer and interviewee or within the focus group.

2 Social position – the relative positions of the actors involved in the interview or focus group process in the context of the social arrangements that embed them (the legal, economic, religious, com-munity, organizational, cultural, gender, ethnic and so on structures).

3 Value – the value that the ‘information’ has as a commodity for sale (in the media, as blackmail, as

‘leverage’ in some dispute, as a ‘juicy quote’ to enliven a dissertation or publication); the value of the interview as evocative of ‘truth’, of ‘reality’, of the ‘conditions of everyday life’, the value of the interviewee’s words as ‘testimony’ of a way of life.

4 Trust – given all the vulnerabilities, the desire to make a good impression, the desire to conceal shady dimensions, trust is a delicate gift, easily broken. To what extent is it the guarantor of accuracy, the underwriter of ‘truth’, ‘honesty’,

‘reality’, ‘objectivity’?

5 Meaning – the meaning heard by one individual may not be the same as that intended by the speaker. Interviews and focus groups provide an opportunity to check the meanings intended.

However, it can be argued that there are uncon-scious or latent meanings that, although not intended, may provide a ‘truth’ or reveal an alternative ‘reality’ that underpins apparent ac-tions. The words employed to represent experien-ces, realities, points of view, expressions of self are all open to alternative meanings.

6 Interpretation– if there are multiple meanings, then interpretation is critical. However, what rules, what approaches, what frameworks can be em-ployed to underpin the process of making and selecting appropriate, ‘correct’, ‘significant’ inter-pretations?

7 Uncertainty– with multiple meanings and multiple interpretations a stable resting place may be difficult, even impossible, to find.

These concepts – and others – problematize interview-ing and focus group discussions as natural ways of

‘getting’ the data. So what strategies are available to ensure that data are useful and evoke real, ‘true’, trustworthy and accurate representations of ‘experi-ence’, events seen, values espoused and beliefs held?

The evocation of the real

The sense of the ‘real’ is at the heart of the interview and is the focus for political contention. There are three kinds of strategy for getting at the ‘real’ in interviews. These I call: imposition, grounded and emergence.

Impositional strategies begin with a list of themes, issues, problems, questions to be covered. These may be drawn from a review of the literature, the imagination or an ‘expert group’. Once identified they are generally tested with small groups to reduce ambiguity and to identify questions that produce the most useful spread of information, as a way of standardizing the questions that can be applied across a large sample. The aim of this ‘closed interview’

format is to generate the conditions for generalization across populations. Some flexibility may be built in by including some ‘open ended’ questions thus generat-ing semi-structured interviews. These enable the interviewer to capture unexpected issues and informa-tion. However, such a method as a quasi-natural science approach can be criticized for not adopting strategies appropriate to the specific nature of social contexts and processes (Pawson and Tilley, 1997;

Schostak, 2002). Finally, such impositional strategies reinforce the power of the interviewer over that of the interviewee and create the suspicion that the other is

‘hiding something’ that must be found out. What does the interviewer really want? What is it that the interviewee is keeping secret? What is it that the interviewer is really going to do with the data collected? In whose interests will it be used? There is, as Bourdieu has pointed out, an implicit violence here, a symbolic violence.

Through a range of interviews, Bourdieu and his team wanted to evoke French working-class experi-ence (Bourdieu, 1993). How should the interviews be conducted to meet this aim? The aim was to provide a stage for the voices of those who live in the slum

suburbs providing testimony of the inequalities, the injustices, the tensions, the anxieties of everyday life in a country that is one of the richest in the world.

Bourdieu (1993: 1389–447) provided a rationale for his approach. It is through an ever vigilant self-reflexivity in the very process of interviewing itself that the researcher guards against the multiple com-plex influences of all the social pressures and traps (1993: 1391). How does one reduce the symbolic violence that the researcher may bring to bear upon the interviewee? That is, there is the presumed power, social status and knowledge of the researcher that may be used to manipulate the interview. There is the agenda of concerns that the interviewer may impose upon the interview which may prevent the inter-viewees raising the concerns of their own lives. The interviewer should adopt the pose of the listener in a way that parallels the language and manners of the interviewee and does not impose or objectivize the person who is invited to speak.

Clearly, the interview is much more than just a tool, like a drill to screw deeper into the discursive structures that frame the worlds of ‘subjects’. It is as much a way of seeing, or rather a condition for seeing anything at all. Kvale (1996) regards the ‘InterView’ as a way of bringing together the multiple views of people. I regard the inter-view (Schostak, in press) as the space between views, not the views themselves but the negative condition under which people may express their views to each other and to themselves.

It is the very condition for critical reflective dialogue to emerge and be maintained and for a provisional consensus ‘for all practical purposes’ to be framed without it falling into sterile, totalitarian monologue (see Schostak, 2002). This kind of dialogic approach to the interview and the focus group has implications for research design.

Between one-to-one interviews and the groups of everyday life sits the focus group. Rather than convening groups of strangers – advised by most marketing research texts – it is generally better to get as close as possible to the real-life situations where people discuss, formulate and modify their views and make sense of their experiences as in peer groups or professional teams. However, there are problems, such as obvious and hidden ‘pecking orders’, the histories they have with each other, their possible animosities and the considerable potential for con-fusion about the purpose of the meeting.

Once convened, focus groups can – and do – take on a life of their own. Although capitalizing on the

privileged ‘fly on the wall’ status, the researcher cannot abdicate responsibility for the impact which taking part in a focus group discussion may have on continuing relationships within the group. Some of the banter observed during sessions is, of course, part and parcel of social interaction and the usual way in which group members act towards each other (and may or may not be inherently interesting to the researcher – depending on the topic of the research).

However, in bringing even a pre-existing group together for research purposes, we may ask people to cross boundaries which they do not normally do in the contexts in which they usually meet. This raises the particular challenge of ensuring confidentiality which is crucially important to address ‘up front’ at the start and not assume this work has already been done.

Focus groups are not simply cheap and dirty surveys. Treating them as such ignores fundamental differences in sampling. Focus group studies generally employ either convenience or purposive sampling, neither of which produces a representative sample.

Treating focus group data as if they can simply be aggregated and ‘multiplied up’ is to overlook the importance of group dynamics. Focus groups are not an effective way of measuring attitudes or, even, of eliciting people’s ‘real views’. This is because they are, fundamentally, a social process through which partici-pants co-produce an account of themselves and their ideas which is specific to that time and place. This is why focus groups tend to veer towards consensus.

Sim cautions:

It is difficult, and probably misguided, to attempt to infer an attitudinal consensus from focus group data. An apparent conformity of view is an emergent property of the group interaction, not a reflection of individual participants’ opinions.

(1998: 350)

Implications for research design

So what is research design? The phrase ‘research design’ sounds powerful, clean, scientific, solid. A bit scary. Really, at times, it can feel like a mess.

Employing laboratory-designed methods for research that focuses upon the complex, dynamic, plastic worlds of everyday social and personal life is rather like taking a pile driver to do lace work. Yet, there are ways of thinking through design that evoke rather

4 I N T E R V I E W I N G A N D FO C U S G R O U P S

than impose on the realities of people’s experiences.

We’ve already started thinking about some of the decisions to be made and practicalities involved in using focus groups. This kind of approach evolves often unexpectedly as the research unfolds. That means there is no recipe about how to put the ingredients together that will be appropriate to all possible cases. However, the design will take into account such issues as:

( access to people;

( the range of perspectives/discursive communities;

( the problem profile;

( ethics of data collection, processing and use;

( making the record;

( representation of the experience of the research process and the experiences of the subjects of the research;

( analytic processing;

( writing up.

The question is, how to put these together in a way that makes sense within the specific circumstances of a given research enterprise. In particular, if it is to be emergent and/or grounded and/or dialogic the kinds of questions that are likely to focus the research are:

( Who talks to who, when, where and why?

( Who avoids talking to who, when, where and ( why?Who talks about who, when, where and why?

( What do they talk about, when, where and why?

( What do they keep quiet about, when, where and ( why?And, in each case, under what circumstances and

to who?

From these kinds of questions a key list of people can be identified where each person acts in relation to some other individual and/or group (cf, Schostak, 1983, 1985, 2002).

This emphasis upon relationships between actors directed in some way towards each other (whether in friendship, hate, fear or indeed indifference) creates the conditions for the triangulation (or cross-checking of views, facts and so on) and also for establishing the degree of generalization across groups, contexts, discourse communities, and over time. This can be used to advantage in snowball sampling, where the researcher may not be aware, at the outset, of all the relevant players involved. However, to gain access to

people in this way requires the building of trust (is the interviewing going to reveal hidden views that could damage friendships, careers and even threaten lives?).

Such sensitivities are especially important when select-ing focus group participants (see the section on Stories from the Field). Hence, a fundamental con-cern is the development of an ethical framework to govern access to people and places and govern the ways in which what is seen and heard is going to be represented and used. Such a framework generally focuses upon negotiating the principles under which anonymity, confidentiality and rights of access are to be constructed. The danger is that such principles are developed routinely, rather like an audit, or indeed quasi-bureaucratically as in the various ethics commit-tees that govern research in health contexts. To reduce symbolic violence the principles should be individually negotiated with each interviewee before each interview (see Enquiry Learning Unit website).

Designing focus group studies

Despite their apparent accessibility focus groups present a number of challenges to the researcher:

( the logistics of accessing participants and conven-ing groups;

( the potential and limitations of ‘piggybacking’ on existing meetings;

( the heightened influence of gatekeepers;

( group dynamics – individuals who play to an audience and those who may be intimidated and reluctant to contribute;

( striking a balance between encouraging sponta-neity and adhering to the research agenda;

( the difficulty of ensuring confidentiality.

Groups and communities are fluid entities and gaining permission to attend a forthcoming meeting of a group is not necessarily the same thing as securing agreement from everyone who actually attends the next session. Representation is an equally tricky concept, as anyone who has attempted to secure participation from user and carer representatives will know from their own experience. Many people who agree to become involved in discussions – whether these are committee meetings, public debates or focus groups – may very well have their own agenda, which may or may not reflect the concerns of others in similar circumstances. Gatekeepers assume great im-portance in setting up focus groups and time spent

briefing such individuals on the purpose of our work is time well spent – otherwise they may inadvertently select people out as well as select them in (Kitzinger and Barbour, 1999).

Stories from the Field

Rosaline S. Barbour

This section refers specifically to the use of focus groups as an important form of interviewing in research. Focus groups rely on the researcher as the principal data generating tool. We do not stand back from our group members and merely ‘collect’ their responses; we actively engage with them, often thinking on our feet as we invite them to explore with us the limitations they might place around their responses and how they would contextualize their views. This is why focus group topic guides tend to be very short and sparse, leaving room for the researcher to pick up on such leads as these arise.

Even as data are generated, focus group moderators engage in preliminary analysis by beginning to theor-ize and inviting participants to theortheor-ize about similar-ities and differences revealed through discussions. As with developing interview schedules, however, there is considerable skill in utilizing such ‘off the cuff’ probes without slipping into asking leading questions (Bar-bour et al., 2000). Pilot work can pay enormous dividends by developing a few questions and probes that stimulate discussion about the key research topics. Stimulus materials (newspaper clippings, ex-cerpts from TV soaps, etc.) can be valuable in focusing discussion on the research agenda. However, this can backfire on the unwary researcher by conjur-ing up even more compellconjur-ing associations so side-tracking discussion. It is, therefore, important to test out beforehand any materials you may be thinking of using.

Focus groups are especially attractive: not only can they be extremely enjoyable to run, they are often regarded as the easy option. However, setting them up is bedevilled by many logistical problems. Achiev-ing diversity is difficult enough in interview studies without the added complication of having to find mutually convenient times for several individuals.

Using pre-existing meeting slots is a particularly attractive solution. It is important to allow plenty of

Using pre-existing meeting slots is a particularly attractive solution. It is important to allow plenty of