Natural Interactions in Artifical Situations: Focus Groups as an Active Social Experiment

Jakob Demant

doi:10.5772/34659

Natural Interactions in Artifical Situations: Focus Groups as an Active Social Experiment

Abstract

This chapter discuss the question of how the validity of focus group data can be reframed when approaching focus groups as social experiments in a science and technology approach. By using this frame we first of all comes to perceive the focus group discussion as an artificial situation, while the interactions going on in the group can be described as natural occurring data (cf. Silverman, 2007). Thus this approach comes to terms with some of the problems addressed within both positivistic as well as constructivist uses of focus group methods. Secondly, framing focus groups as social experiments also highlights possibilities of a more active use of groups (by intervention) that resembles the interviewing situations as an active ethnomethodological breaching. It is within this framework of “stimulated or irritated” natural occurring data that focus groups will be discussed.

Originalsprog	Engelsk
Titel	An Ethnography of Global Landscapes and Corridors
Redaktører	Loshini Naidoo
Udgivelsessted	Rijeka
Forlag	InTech
Publikationsdato	2012
Sider	57-88
Kapitel	4
ISBN (Trykt)	978-953-51-0254-0
DOI	https://doi.org/10.5772/34659
Status	Udgivet - 2012

Adgang til dokumentet

10.5772/34659

http://cdn.intechopen.com/pdfs/31537/InTech-Natural_interactions_in_artificial_situations_focus_groups_as_an_active_social_experiment.pdf

Citationsformater

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