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Using Focus Groups for Community Engagement: Benefit or Bane?

Using Focus Groups for Community Engagement: Benefit or Bane?. Nancy Franz-Iowa State University. Dr. Nancy Franz. ISU Extension and Outreach Director, Professional Development Professor, School of Education. Nancy’s Background. 32+ years with Extension in five states

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Using Focus Groups for Community Engagement: Benefit or Bane?

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  1. Using Focus Groups for Community Engagement: Benefit or Bane? Nancy Franz-Iowa State University

  2. Dr. Nancy Franz ISU Extension and Outreach Director, Professional Development Professor, School of Education

  3. Nancy’s Background • 32+ years with Extension in five states 4-H agent, volunteer, department head, district liaison, state specialist, project administrator, graduate student, administrator • Youth and adult education in all program areas • Research in TL and E&R community engagement

  4. Overview • Popularity of focus groups for community engagement • People love them • Unfocused group can be invaluable • The topic • The group’s culture • Busy and messy context • Value of the group experience

  5. Overview • Facilitating unfocused groups is art and science • Value of focus groups • Focus group participants • Group facilitation best practices • Facilitation issues • Focus vs. unfocus in groups • Benefits and disadvantages of unfocs

  6. What is a Focus Group? “A carefully planned series of discussions to obtain the perceptions on a defined area of interest in a permissive, nonthreatening environment.” Krueger and Casey, 2009

  7. Value of Focus Groups • Hearing unheard voices • Rich discussion-building on participant comments • Hold each other to experience-based truth • Use alone or with other methods • Gather a lot of info in a short amount of time

  8. Value of Focus Groups • Program or organizational evaluation • Increase participant engagement • Prevent conflict • Enhance innovation and improvement • Enjoyment from the empowering environment-socially appealing

  9. Focus Group Participants • Determines results and usefulness • Common characteristics related to purpose of the conversation • Unfamiliar with each other • 4-12 per group • Multiple groups (3-5)

  10. Facilitation Best Practices • Facilitator skills and background • Respect for participants • Empathy and topic knowledge • Effective communication • Good questioning and listening skills • Ability to control personal skills • Sense of humor • Ability to handle the unexpected

  11. Facilitation Issues • Expect surprises • Prepare for the weather, attendance, the venue, distractions, too much or too little discussion, experts, dominators, shy participants • Timing of questions • Participants perceptions of each other • Cultural issues (norms, history)

  12. Dealing with Issues • Learn about the group and group culture ahead of time • Learn about the venue ahead of time • Use pauses and probes • Prevent persuasion or conversion • Stay away from hot topics • Foster natural discussion

  13. Focus vs. Unfocus in Groups • Mixed advice on staying focused • Focus groups can be hard to control due to social nature of the process • Training and experience help determine when best to control the conversation • Balancing control between the facilitator and the group is an art not science • Use probes to help with balance

  14. Causes of Unfocus • Participants are too diverse • Background noise and critical events in the group culture • Promotion and tenure noise • Budget strains preventing learning from each other • Operations/Service cuts or changes • Poor or inexperienced facilitator

  15. Benefits of Unfocus • Personal reflection • Discovery of new things • Important networking • Introduces new themes/outliers important for the discussion or comparison • Important issues arise • Deeper insights • Learning/release/therapy

  16. Disadvantages of Unfocus • Facilitator gives up some control • Main questions may not get discussed or answered • Minority voices may feel unwelcome/close down • Negative feels/damaged reputation of the host • More difficult data analysis • Impacts on credibility, trustworthiness and transferability • Participant frustration/fatigue • Facilitator frustration/fatigue

  17. Lessons Learned • Help participants connect with each other to build trust before getting unfocused • Facilitator needs to value unfocus benefits and reduce negative aspects of unfocus • Facilitator needs to model co-learning • Embrace the idea of no right or wrong answers • Be careful about power and privilege imbalances

  18. So? What are your experiences with focus groups and community engagement?

  19. Thank you nfranz@iastate.edu

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