Resumen

SILVA, Isabel Soares; VELOSO, Ana Luísa  y  KEATING, José Bernardo. Focus Group: Theoretical and methodological considerations. Rev. Lusófona de Educação [online]. 2014, n.26, pp.175-190. ISSN 1645-7250.

The use of focus group has extended its field of application to different disciplines and for different purposes, such as, for example, in the health education research. This work starts off describing how this methodological tool is understood, as well as its main applications, especially within the framework of research projects. Then it describes the main potentialities and limitations of its use, compared to other methods of data collection. The second part of this work describes the principal stages leading to the implementation process of focus group, namely, planning, preparation, conducting, data analysis and dissemination of results. From the methodological point of view, when describing and assessing those stages, the focus will be particularly put on the aspects related to the degree of structuration of the project, the interview guide, the moderator role, the dimension and composition of the groups, the recruitment of participants, and the strategies of data dissemination. Based on the authors’ experience in applying this methodology, the work concludes with an assessment of the principal advantages and difficulties across the various stages of the application process.

Palabras clave : focus group; research methods; qualitative research; methodology.

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