Sök artiklar i SveMed+

Tidskrift

Sammanfattning

Focus group interviews have gained considerable popularity in contemporary health care research. This article presents a special variety of this method, namely the multi-stage focus group interview which until recently has received little attention in research articles. However, it has proved to be a relevant and fruitful method in various, collaborative research designs. This article draws on experiences from several research projects based on a co-operative inquiry design. The dialogical nature of this research strategy has been the main reason for making use of multi-stage focus group interviews. While traditional focus group design covers at least three separate groups intending to investigate the width and variation of a certain theme, the multi-stage focus group is characterized by the in-depth exploration of the same group of theproblem, theme, or phenomenon in focusover several meetings. These dialogues make it possible for the experiences of the participants to reach higher levels of abstraction. Thus, the potential utility value of the knowledge exceeds the concrete situation in which it is created. This article illustrates the practical and methodological implications of the method.

MeSH