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Using staff focus groups in the redevelopment of a library web site deploys their knowledge of user navigation issues and search strategies and addresses the unique needs of library staff. This paper seeks to describe the process of planning, recruiting, and conducting staff focus groups and provide a discussion of lessons learned.

A committee of professionals and non‐professionals from the University of Calgary Library conducted a series of five focus groups with library staff. The goals were to determine their content and service priorities for the redesigned library web site, and also to ensure that staff was included in the redesign process.

This paper makes recommendations for library staff focus group interviewing, including planning, formulating questions, recruitment, conducting sessions, and analysis and reporting.

Focus group interviews can be effectively conducted in‐house, with careful planning and adherence to established guidelines. Focus groups are a very useful method for gathering staff input for web site redesign or any other library‐planning project.

This paper will be useful to librarians interested in assessing staff needs and priorities through focus group interviews. The paper fills a void in the library literature regarding the use of library staff as both focus group leaders and participants.

This paper seeks to highlight the current confusion in the terminology for group research, identify the geographic, historical and scientific sources of this confusion and suggest a reduction in the number of terms used to two, thereby offering a definition on which researchers from different cultural backgrounds and scientific traditions may be able to agree.

A review of the academic and practitioner literature on qualitative group research in academic, social and market research indicates that various terms for groups are used interchangeably and are often assumed to have the same meaning. These terms include; Focus Group, Group Discussion, Group Interview, Group, Focus Group Interview, Focus Group Discussion, Qualitative Group Discussion and Nominal Group Interview.

The contribution of this paper is that it offers a resolution of this issue and so allows researchers from across geographic borders, different scientific traditions and from both academic and practitioner backgrounds to talk to one another in a common language.

This issue of differences in terminology for groups has largely been ignored by researchers and this paper hopes to bring some clarity and understanding of the key differences between focus group interviews and focus group discussions.

Considers the focus group as an alternative to the traditional structured questionnaire. Their appeal, what they can and cannot achieve, and four key questions related to conducting focus groups are discussed. Focus groups are relevant to a broad spectrum of marketing issues related to the food industry, and it is concluded that their role will continue to dominate qualitative market research. Increasingly high standards will be demanded of moderators, perhaps leading to recognised qualifications for the holding of focus groups.

This paper aims to explore the benefits of using faculty focus groups as an early component of a scholarly communications program with suggestions for planning and conducting sessions, recruiting participants and analyzing outcomes.

The paper is based on the authors' use of focus groups in the initial stages of organizing a scholarly communications program at Kansas State University.

The paper finds that focus groups are an effective method to begin identifying scholarly communication issues that resonate with faculty on a particular campus. Focus groups can be helpful in targeting efforts to begin a scholarly communications program.

Focus groups are effective in generating insights, opinions and attitudes and are low cost in terms of time and resource commitments.

There is very little in the literature about using faculty focus groups to start a campus scholarly communication program. This paper provides practical and useful information that other libraries can use to incorporate this method into their planning.

Focus groups are an effective strategy in consumer research if conducted properly. Too often the meaning and origin of focus groups have been distorted by marketing and consumer researchers and the validity of retrieved data is questioned. By looking at the definition and evolution of focus groups, definitive advantages and disadvantages of the method emerge. Focus groups provide the collective insight of group dynamics while preserving individual preferences. If focus groups are contrived using true qualitative characteristics, this method may yield the strongest data for use by consumer and marketing researchers in truly identifying with customers today.

This study aims to explore experiences of the Framework for Integrated Care's team formulation process within a secure children’s home in northern England, from the perspective of care and education staff.

Four focus groups were facilitated, with a total of 25 participants. The focus groups discussed a number of key areas, including: staff experiences of team formulation; the usefulness of the process; the wider impact of the process; and ways the formulation process could be developed. The data set was analysed using Rapid Qualitative Analysis (Hamilton, 2013).

Six overarching themes and a number of accompanying subthemes were developed. The six themes were: (i) new ways of understanding; (ii) enabling communication; (iii) young person should be at the centre; (iv) practical considerations; (v) developing accessibility: a systemic lens; and (vi) developing the focus.

Ten implications for practice within secure children’s homes and wider establishments are outlined. These relate to various aspects of the formulation process, including the preparatory work, meeting attendance, the focus of the formulation and dissemination.

Research within the context of secure children’s homes is expanding and has included the direct involvement of young people. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study utilising a qualitative, focus group method to consider the experiences of team formulation from the perspective of the wider care and education staff team in a secure children’s home.

Research with vulnerable groups is crucial to get their input into public policy design that will directly impact on them. However, there are many methodological and ethical challenges involved in encouraging participation from groups with a wide range of intellectual, cognitive and physical capacities while ensuring that the rights and well-being of participants are protected. Rather than exploring ethical theories, this chapter is a case study describing the practical ethical considerations that were involved in designing and holding a series of focus groups with adult health and social care service users from vulnerable cohorts. It is based on a series of focus groups which the Institute of Public Health (IPH) held with specified cohorts as part of a policy development process on adult safeguarding for the Department of Health (DOH) in Ireland. The four cohorts were people with intellectual disability, cognitive impairments, significant mental health challenges and nursing home residents. This chapter does not describe the findings of the focus groups but outlines the ethical and methodological considerations that arose in designing and conducting this research, and the practical ethical safeguards employed to mitigate risk and comply with Irish and EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) legislation governing health research. It outlines the ethical issues around protecting confidentiality and using incentives to encourage participation, how individuals' capacity to give informed consent was maximized, the risk-assessment and mitigation procedures used to prevent harms arising and the measures put in place to provide follow-up emotional support to participants.

Everyday conversation has not yet been assigned its full role in public discussion of citizen’s issues, despite the growing number of studies about it. Casual conversations are not usually regarded as a particularly privileged place for political discussions mainly because of its apparent lack of organization following the principles and rules of the deliberative tradition in Political Studies. However, due to its closeness, informality, and personal proximity, it is particularly adequate to rise political aspects of everyday lives that otherwise would not be publicly disclosed. But how to grasp the spontaneity of everyday conversation? This chapter argues that focus groups, as a research method, are fit to observe and understand real-time ordinary conversation on political issues. In what follows, the argument goes threefold: (1) it contrasts “conversation” with “deliberation” from a micro-point of view; (2) all conversation, as a discourse embroiled in power relations, is political in a broad sense (3) as it brings forward personal views and experiences, casual conversations defies the borders between public and private issues.

Focus groups can provide a rich and meaningful context in which to explore diverse bioethics topics. They are particularly useful for describing people's experiences of and/or attitudes toward specific ethical conundrums, but can also be used to identify ethics training needs among medical professionals, evaluate ethics programs and consent processes, and stimulate patient advocacy. This chapter discusses these and other applications of focus group methodology. It examines how to ethically and practically plan and recruit for, conduct, and analyze the results of focus groups. The place of focus groups among other qualitative research methods is also discussed.

Organizations are increasingly joining inter-organizational networks to foster sustainable employability for their employees. The purpose of this study is to identify the factors and mechanisms central to their success as experienced by key stakeholders.

An explorative, qualitative approach was adopted, using four focus groups with network coordinators (N = 18) and HR professionals (N = 14). Fourteen Dutch inter-organizational networks were represented. Respondents were recruited through purposive and snowballing sampling techniques. Thematic analysis was applied using open coding to generate themes.

The results of this study outline environmental, structural, and inter-personal factors and mechanisms that contribute to the success of inter-organizational networks that aim to foster sustainable employability for their employees. The environmental factors and mechanisms consist of challenges stemming from the labor market. The structural factors and mechanisms include: a network’s flat structure, flat fee, lack of informal rules, the allocation of roles and expectations for stakeholders and shared network activities. Lastly, the inter-personal factors and mechanisms are: communication among stakeholders, establishing reciprocity, interaction and collaboration between stakeholders, the valuation of trust, a convivial culture and shared vision among stakeholders. The dynamics between these factors and mechanisms are compared to other forms of inter-organizational networks. Furthermore, several recommendations for network coordinators and practitioners regarding the development of networks are presented.

This study provides insights into the factors and mechanisms that are regarded by stakeholders as influencing the success of inter-organizational networks in their ability to foster sustainable employability for workers. We have identified a unique model that captures this new way of inter-organizational collaboration and builds on insights from literature on collaborative governance regimes, institutional fields and entrepreneurial ecosystems. Specifically, the model provides a framework that consists of environmental, structural and interpersonal factors and mechanisms for network success. This study increases our understanding of how collaborative efforts can be fostered beyond organizational boundaries and existing Human Resource Management practices.