Las macrodestrezas

The first phase of data collection addressed research questions from the perspective of those who organsie wellbeing travel, to better understand the

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address research questions from the perspective of the Australian people, wellbeing travellers and potential travellers. The research questions for Phase 2 were:

1. How is wellbeing travel in Australia socially constructed?

a) What are the dominant discourses informing the concept of wellbeing travel?

b) Is there an overarching discourse of ‘wellbeing’ for wellbeing travel service providers in Australia and the Australian people?

c) How does ‘wellbeing’ discourse inform the development of wellbeing travel, and potential tourists.

2. What are the drivers and constraints of travelling for wellbeing in Australia?

d) From the perspective of Australian people.

To begin exploring these question from the perspective of people a focus group was established. Focus groups are a good method to inform the direction of further research for specific groups of people or topics of research (Dwyer, Gill & Neelu, 2012, p. 354). The focus group offers a condensed site of information and an environment where a group can communicate, agree or disagree with each other and sort through concepts. Additionally, Hay (2005, p. 71-72) states “generally speaking, the more focused our research interest becomes, and the better our background information and understanding, the more certain we are about who we wish to be involved in our research and why”.

The data collected from the focus group aimed to achieve a greater focus for approaching the design of the mixed method representative survey, for instance, the results from the focus groups would guide the content of the survey, and the sample selection. In exploratory research, focus group are regularly used prior to the

development of surveys to help identify ‘priority topics’; they can be called ‘Pilot focus groups’ (Bloor, 2001).

The original plan for the data collection was to conduct more than one ‘pilot focus group, however after the first focus group data collection was complete, the researcher and principal supervisor determined one focus group was enough to assist in the construction of themes for the survey (Bloor, 2001, p. 9).

96 Participants

Participants were recruited as clients of the Naturopathic Way. Over a period of four weeks, clients presenting at reception were asked if they would like to participate in a focus group. Those who were interested were given the study information. A total of eight participants attended the focus group. It is generally acknowledged that the ideal number of participants for focus groups are between 5 and 15 (Babbie, 2013) “to have enough people to generate discussion, without so many that it becomes difficult for the facilitator to involve all participants” (Dwyer et al., 2012, p. 355). According to Dwyer et al. (2012), focus groups are beneficial for smaller groups who may be unrepresented in a representative research method, and also as a method which can empower small or minority groups. Other advantages include collecting a lot of data in a short amount of time and can be potentially cost efficient (Kruger, 1988).

The eight participants were all female aged between 22 and 56. Six of the participants were married, two single and all except one were employed in some capacity, whether full time, part time or casual. Three participants had Bachelor Degrees, two a Diploma, two had attended TAFE and one had completed year 12. All participants regularly engaged with some sort of wellbeing activities including, exercise, healthy eating habits, yoga, and meditation. Other activities engaged with were Tai Chi, Reflexology, Chiropractor and massage. All participants listed at least three wellbeing activities that they engaged with regularly. Please see Appendix _ for the question sheet that was given to participants and Appendix _ for the question sheet table of results.

Procedure

The researcher made telephone contact with the owner of a naturopathic business in Melbourne’s south east, ‘Lina’ - a person known to the researcher. Lina was asked if she would conduct and facilitate a focus group at her place of business, with participants from her customer base. It was agreed that Lina would recruit participants by asking them if they were interested to participate in the project, and giving them an Information Sheet to take home. At this time, the researcher and Lina discussed the content of the focus group and how Lina would facilitate the group.

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Over a period of eight weeks, Lina approached 16 potential participants, 4 male and 12 female, resulting in 8 focus group participants.

On the morning the focus group took place, the researcher and Lina met at the place of business to discuss the focus group themes, the consent form process and how to record the interview. Participants were asked to sign the Consent Form before the focus group proceeded. They were briefly introduced to the research before

commencing discussion. The focus group lasted approximately 40 minutes. The researcher returned to the place of business in the afternoon to collect the audio recording, Consent Forms and to debrief with Lina. Similar to the themes which were addressed in Phase 1 of data collection (in depth interviews) the focus group schedule was created as a set of themes rather than questions. Please see Appendix G for the interview schedule.

Focus Group Data Analysis

Following the analysis process described in the interview data, the Focus Group was also recorded and transcribed by the researcher, assisting researcher immersion in the data. The interviews were exported to QSR Nvivo 9 for thematic network qualitative analysis to determine the leading themes making up a discourse of wellbeing for this group, and their knowledge and use of wellbeing travel.