Chapter 9: Toward More Rigor in Focus Group Research in Stress and Coping and Beyond: A New Mixed Research Framework for Collecting and Analyzing Focus Group Data

Focus group research, which is often utilized in stress and coping studies, is a carefully designed technique for collecting data. These data pertain to a pre-defined area of interest simultaneously collected from several individuals in an environment that is as non-threatening as possible and that allows the participants to share their perceptions, experiences, ideas, and opinions in an interactive manner (Krueger & Casey, 2000). Alternatively stated, a focus group is “a group interview—centered on a specific topic (‘focus’) and facilitated and co-ordinated by a moderator or facilitator—which seeks to generate primarily qualitative data, by capitalizing on the interaction that occurs within the group setting” (Sim & Snell, 1996, p. 189).