Why Do Focus Groups Work? A Review (Fern 1982) PDF

**Why Do Focus Groups Work: a Review and Integration of Small Group Process Theories** **y Do Focus Groups Work: a Review** *Edward F. Fern (1982) ,\"Why Do Focus Groups Work: a Review and Integration of Small Group Process Theories\", in NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 09, eds. Andrew M...

**Why Do Focus Groups Work: a Review and Integration of Small Group Process Theories** **y Do Focus Groups Work: a Review** *Edward F. Fern (1982) ,\"Why Do Focus Groups Work: a Review and Integration of Small Group Process Theories\", in NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 09, eds. Andrew Mitchell, Ann Abor, MI : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 444-451.* Edward F. Fern, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University ABSTRACT Several small group process theories were reviewed and integrated into a more general theory of social impact. The resulting model suggests alternative explanations and hypotheses for the focus group phenomenon. INTRODUCTION Focus groups have been in use for approximately twenty five years, yet most of what is known about this popular research tool comes from experiential reports by group moderators. Almost no empirical research has been done on the use of groups and no theoretical foundation has been offered to support the evidence provided by moderators. The purpose of the paper is to (1) explore the group moderators\' explanations for why focus groups work, (2) review several small group process theories which may account for the focus group phenomenon, (3) integrate several theories of small group processes into a more general theory of social impact, (4) assess the implications of group process theory for focus group research, and (5) suggest theory based hypotheses for the future study of focus groups. Several \"naive theories\" or hypotheses have been advanced by moderators and others as explanations for why focus groups seem to work. One hypothesis depicts the group member as hiding in \"the midst of the lonely crowd\" \[Hess, 1968\]. The group is seen as providing security for its members in the same way a crowded city provides a sanctuary for fugitives. Focus group participants, according to this explanation, have a feeling of lowered identifiability or greater anonymity than participants in individual interviews. As a consequence group members feel less inhibited and are more willing to volunteer information, even when it is highly personal. Another explanation of the focus group phenomenon is that a norm is created which makes it okay to speak out in front of others. In the course of group discussion, the less inhibited individuals \"ventilate\" their experiences, which encourages others to ventilate theirs. If the \"self-starters\" are rewarded or receive approval, norms will be established for the more inhibited members. Once the process is well under way it tends to be \"self-maintaining and self-reinforcing.\" As other group members see the atmosphere becoming more permissive, they become less reluctant to discuss personal experiences and habits. Another explanation suggests that increased excitement and enthusiasm, resulting from a warm-up period, leads participants to want to get their ideas out and expose their feelings \[Hess, 1968\]. Goldman \[1962\] sees the group as providing social strength and support which members can draw upon when expressing anxiety-provoking or socially unpopular ideas. Although these explanations make intuitive senseS one might have more faith in focus groups if small group process theories, which have been tested empirically, were found to support them. To this end a review of group process theory was undertaken. This review looks at studies done on (1) deindividuation theory, (2) social facilitation theory, (3) diffusion of responsibility theory, and (4) social impact-theory. Deindividuation According to Zimbardo (1969), the deindividuated internal state is characterized by diminished self-awareness and self-evaluation, and less concern for the evaluation of others. Anonymity, the presence of other people, decreased responsibility, and arousal will all lead to a deindividuated state of mind which in turn results in less restrained or uninhibited behavior. Several studies have supported the prediction that high anonymity and low identifiability result in uninhibited behavior (Dipboye, 1977). The effect of group size or the presence of an audience on deindividuated behavior has been reported less consistentlY. The effects of group presence, anonymity, and arousal on aggression and deindividuation were studied by Diener (1976). Eighty male introductory psychology students participated in a factorial design study with two levels of group presence (group vs. alone), two levels of anonymity (anonymous vs. nonanonymous), and two levels of arousal (arousal vs. no arousal). Arousal was induced by having subjects perform the rather extreme behavior of throwing bottles against a wall. The bottle throwing activity was eliminated for the no arousal condition. Aggression was defined as \"any potentially pain-producing stimuli\" delivered to a role player who acted as a target for the aggressive weapons (e.g., foam swords and newspaper balls). Subjects upon entering the experimental room were told they could do \"various things\" to the role player with the weapons but specific behaviors were not suggested. Observers recorded aggressive behavior but deindividuation was measured using a post experimental questionnaire. As might be expected, the aroused subjects displayed significantly more aggressive acts than the unaroused subjects. However, individuals in the three person group condition were less aggressive than those left alone with the role player. Also anonymity (whether or not other members and the role player knew the subjects names) did not result in greater aggressive behavior as expected. The latter two findings were contrary to the predictions from deindividuation theory. Responses to the questionnaire items showed that anonymous subjects did feel less concern for social evaluation, but this did not result in a significant difference in aggressive behavior. Perhaps anonymity is not a sufficient condition for causing uninhibited behaviors. A second unexpected finding was that groups were less inclined to behave aggressively than individuals. Moreover, neither groups nor individuals showed evidence of the deindividuated state as measured by the questionnaire. \[Although several deindividuation measures were used in this study, social evaluation (i.e., concern for what others would think of them) was the only one on which anonymous subjects showed a significant difference.\] In this particular study groups did not cause a release of inhibition. Another extreme manipulation was used by Gergen, Gergen, and Barton (1973) to test deindividuation theory. Approximately fifty 18-25 year old college students were divided into groups of eight members, four males and four females. In the high anonymity condition, each group was put into a 10 x 12 foot room for an hour with only a pinpoint of red light. The subjects were told \"There are no rules \... as to what you should do together.\" Subjects in this condition were compared with subjects in a lighted room to determine how a situation which is free from normative pressures affects behavior. Compared to the lights-on condition, conversation in the dark became \"muted, disjointed, and faltering.\" Subjects in the lighted room found seats where they remained throughout the session. However, in the dark, subjects moved about continuously and frequently touched each other. Fifty percent of the dark room subjects reported hugging another person with 80 percent reporting sexual excitement. Some subjects reported feeling free, more serious, less anxious to be known by others and less anxious to know others. In a follow-up study, Gergen and his associates used an additional 22 students similar to those in the first experiment but told them they would meet after the session. Compared to the extreme anonymity situation, these subjects were more likely to be bored, less likely to hug, and in general had less intense relationships. The Gergen report concludes \"state of anonymity seems to encourage whatever potentials are most prominent at the moment - whether for good or for ill.\" This statement is no doubt an attempt to reconcile the reports that in some situations anonymity leads to aggressive behavior and in other situations it leads to sexual behavior. It could be alternatively argued that the red light in the Gergen study and the bottle throwing warm-up in the Diener study provided non-verbal cues as to what behavior was expected of the subjects. Dipboye (1977), in an extensive review of the literature, attempts to integrate two different theoretical and empirical research approaches to the deindividuation phenomenon. The above studies are examples of the first approach in which lowered personal identifiability reduces moral constraints and results in antinormative behavior such as bottle throwing. For the deindividuated person, lowered identifiability is a positive or desirable experience. The second perspective views man as actively seeking an unique identity. A loss of personal identity is not seen as a pleasurable experience - rather it is a negative experience to be avoided. In this case the individual renews his/her search, presumably through anti-normative behavior, for identity. Contrary to the positive experience associated with the first perspective, being lost in the crowd or being just another face in the crowd is an undesirable experience. In attempting to integrate these differing perspectives of deindividuation theory, Dipboye hypothesizes three moderating variables (l) structure of the social system, (2) the person\'s self-evaluation, and (3) prior self-awareness. He notes a common element among the studies demonstrating a release of inhibition: the studies involved groups of strangers in novel situations. In unorganized groups, facing the uncertain reactions of others in the group, deindividuation is likely to reduce inhibiting self-consciousness and arouse positive affect. In an organized permanent group where an individual occupies a role central to his or her self-concept, deindividuation is likely to serve as a threat and therefore arouses negative affect and a search for identity. Given the unorganized social situations, the reaction of individuals to deindividuation may depend upon their self-esteem. People with low self-esteem should have positive feelings when self-awareness or self-consciousness is reduced due to the effects of (l) anonymity, (2) being part of a large group, or (3) responsibility being diffused. On the other hand, a person with high self-esteem facing the unorganized group may react by seeking out experiences that will heighten self-awareness and react to deindividuation with negative feelings and identity-seeking behavior. The final moderating variable is prior self-awareness. Reactions to deindividuation may depend on the prior level of self-awareness but Dipboye is not at all clear on how the two concepts are related. Therefore, just what predictions would follow from this variable are uncertain. Deindividuation theory was thought to provide a plausible explanation of what might occur in interacting discussion groups. A review of the recent studies in this area makes this notion less tenable. Where uninhibited behavior was noted, the studies used extreme manipulations which do not parallel conditions normally found in discussion groups. Dipboye\'s discussion provides additional insight into what variables and conditions may be necessary to account for the focus group phenomenon. This idea will be pursued later in the paper. First, another theory in which group presence plays an important role will be explored. Social Facilitation Unlike deindividuation theory, social facilitation theory posits the mere presence of others is a sufficient condition for explaining behavior in groups. How the presence of other people affects individual performance has been studied using either: (l) the audience paradigm, or (2) the coaction paradigm. Audience refers to the presence of passive spectators during the performance of a task. The presence of other people doing the same task but independently of the subject is termed coaction. Studies employing these paradigms have resulted in some divergent findings. Some studies have shown that the mere presence of others facilitates individual performance while other studies have shown the mere presence of others leads to decrements in performance. Using the audience paradigm Travis \[Reported in R. B. Zajonc, \"Social Facilitation,\" [Science], Vol. 149, No. 7 (July 1965), pp. 269-274.\], and Dashiell \[Ibid.\] have shown that the mere presence of others facilitates task performance. Travis found improvement in the performance of a pursuit-rotor task when college students performed in the presence of four to eight people. Dashiell likewise found improvement in simple multiplication or word association tasks when subjects performed in front of others. Not all studies have supported these findings, however. In a study reviewed by Cottrell \[1972\], Pessin asked college students to learn nonsense syllables either with others present or alone. When in front of an audience, subjects required more trials in learning the list than when alone, plus the audience condition produced significantly more errors. Other researchers using other tasks have supported the Pessin finding. Zajonc \[1965\] has attempted to resolve these differences by noting the Travis and Dashiell studies involved well learned tasks while the Pessin studies involved learning or acquiring a set of new responses in front of an audience. In a review of many past studies involving humans, insects and birds, as well as a wide range of behaviors, Zajonc found support for the idea that coaction and the presence of an audience facilitates learned responses and leads to decrements in the performance of not well learned responses. Zajonc reasons that this effect is due to the audience enhancing the dominant response. The dominant response is the most probable response whether it is the right or wrong one. If the task is well learned, the dominant response is the right response. If the task has not been learned, the dominant response is most likely to be the wrong response or error. Thus, Zajonc offers a simple generalization to cover both situations, \"audience enhances the emission of dominant responses.\" Zajonc also provides evidence that drive, arousal, and activation increase the chances of emitting the dominant response. The mere presence of others is hypothesized to increase the individual\'s general drive level. If the right or sought responses are dominant, the then increased drive will improve performance by increasing the probability of correct responses. If, on the other hand, the correct or appropriate responses are subordinate to stronger incorrect responses, the increased drive state will impair performance by increasing the probability of incorrect responses. In a modification of the Zajonc hypothesis, Cottrell (1972) suggests that individuals learn to anticipate positive and negative outcomes when others are present through classical conditioning. This anticipation and not the mere presence of others is hypothesized to increase the individual\'s drive level. The anticipation of negative outcomes should lead to decrements in performance of a not well learned task, while anticipated positive outcomes for a well learned task should facilitate performance. The presence of other people may also lead to decrements in performance if, as a result of their presence, each individual feels less responsible for completion of the task at hand. Diffusion of Responsibility Two different areas of study on group behavior have led to the explication of a diffusion of responsibility hypothesis. Wallach, Kogan, and Bem (1962) have used a diffusion of responsibility hypothesis to explain \"risky shifts\" in group choice situations. Diffusion of responsibility to others in a crowd has been offered by Latane and Darley (1970) as an explanation for the lack of bystander intervention in emergency situations. Both the unresponsive bystander and the member of a decision making group face essentially the same dilemma. Standing alone, each individual carries the burden of responsibility for the consequences of their decision to act or to remain passive. Failure to intervene in an emergency results in the individual receiving all the blame when others are not present. Likewise, the responsibility for a risky choice falls on the individual if others are not present. That is, a wrong decision falls on the shoulders of the lone individual. If others are present, however, the individual is less likely to receive all the blame the responsibility is diffused to all of those present. Latane and Darley \[1970\] tested the diffusion hypothesis using male and female introductory psychology students in an epileptic seizure study. Subjects were led to believe they would be part of a group discussion on problems associated with college life. Actually all participants except the subject were tape recorded voices. Each subject was put in a room and was told the discussion would be held over the intercom to preserve anonymity. Each participant was to present his or her problems to the group with a free discussion to follow. The epileptic seizure victim spoke first during the discussion pointing out that he was prone to seizures, particularly when he was studying hard or taking an exam. The naive subject spoke last, after the last prerecorded voice was played. When it was the victim\'s next turn he feigned an epileptic seizure. The major independent variable was the number of other people in the discussion group. The lapsed time from the start of the seizure until the subject left the room to seek help was the dependent variable. The speed of response along with the percent responding is presented in Table 1. Analysis of variance on the reciprocal of response time indicated the effect of group size was highly significant. All comparisons, except between two and three person groups, were significant. According to Latane and Darley the subjects found themselves in a state of conflict and indecision about what to do. On the one hand, subjects worried about the guilt and shame they would feel if they did not help the person in distress. On the other hand, they were concerned about making fools of themselves by overreacting, about ruining the ongoing experiment by leaving their intercoms, and about destroying the anonymous nature of the situation which the experimenter had earlier stressed as important. [[TABLE 1]](https://www.acrwebsite.org/volumes/v09/09446t01.gif) [[EFFECTS OF GROUP SIZE ON LIKELIHOOD AND SPEED OF RESPONSE]](https://www.acrwebsite.org/volumes/v09/09446t01.gif) Although diffusion of responsibility is a widely reported phenomenon, other types of social inhibition have been reported, namely social influence and audience inhibition (Latane, Nida, and Wilson, 1978). More recently Petty et al., reported group members put forth less cognitive effort on an evaluative task than did individuals. Seventy-five introductory psychology student i of both sexes were asked to evaluate an editorial and a poem either alone or as one of a group of four or sixteen people. After reading the communication, the students answered four questions that constituted a general evaluation of the communication and a set of three questions that comprised an effort index. As predicted, the individuals felt they put more effort into the task than did the subjects in groups. The researchers claim this finding supports their hypothesis that responsibility diffusion should lead to reduced cognitive effort. Wallach et al., \[1968\] provide support for the diffusion of responsibility notion in a study on group risk taking. A rather elaborate procedure and set of instructions was developed to isolate two distinct components of the decision making process - group decision and group responsibility. The participants in this study were 336 male and female college undergraduates enrolled in the summer session. They were given booklets of questions from past College Board Examinations to answer. Each question was coded as to level of difficulty, ranging from questions which 10 percent of previous test takers failed to questions which 90 percent failed. A correct answer could win from 17 cents to \$1.50 depending on the level of difficulty of the question. Each group or individual first had to decide on the difficulty level of the question to be tried and then they had to answer it. The procedure involved experimental conditions representing combinations of group decision and group responsibility. The [personal responsibility] condition involved a group decision on difficulty but each individual answered each question (therefore no responsibility to the group should be felt). The [group responsibility-individual decision] condition had each individual deciding on his own level of difficulty. One individual was then randomly selected to answer the question with each member winning or losing based on that individual\'s performance. It was expected that this condition would make conservative choices in question difficulty. The [group responsibility group] [decision] conditions involved the group deciding on the difficulty of the question with an individual, randomly selected in one condition and selected by the group in the other, answering the question. Since, in the random condition, each member faced an equal chance of being selected, felt responsibility to the group should have resulted in a conservative choice in question difficulty. That is, each individual should have chosen a less difficult question than if he or she were only responsible to himself or herself. Presumably if subjects felt responsible to the group they would want to maximize the chances of the group being rewarded for a correct answer. The results show that in the personal responsibility-group decision condition the shift in question difficulty \[The shift index was the difference between mean question difficulty of a practice booklet involving no payoffs and the real booklet containing payoffs.\]indicated increased risk taking compared to a control group. In the group responsibility-individual decision condition the shift was as expected in the conservative direction. When group responsibility and group decision were both present there was a strong shift toward greater risk taking whether the responsible person was randomly selected or chosen by the group. The researchers saw these findings as supportive of the diffusion of responsibility hypothesis. Since the individual was answering the questions at a difficulty level determined by the group, he may have felt that the group would have absolved him of the blame for failure. Wallach et al., suggested the group decision brought about diffusion of responsibility in two ways. First, it appeared in making the decision by pushing decisions in the risky direction. Second, it reduces the felt responsibility of any group member designated to act as the group\'s representative. In the eyes of the responsible group member, the group shares his responsibility since the decision is a group product. Higher risk levels with greater probability of failure apparently could be tolerated more in this situation than when the responsible individual must carry out his responsibility without benefit of communication with the group. Social Impact Theory Latane and Nida \[1980\] have proposed a more general theory of social impact which should accommodate the above theories. Latane defines social impact as \"any effect of the presence or actions of other people on an individual.\" The effect may be \"changes in physiological states, motives, cognitions, emotions, beliefs, values, and behavior that occur in an individual as a function of the real or imagined presence or actions of other people.\" Three basic principles of the theory will be discussed briefly. The first principle states that the amount of impact experienced by an individual should be a multiplicative function of the strength (S), immediacy (I), and number (N) of social forces or I = f (SIN). The second principle specifies a marginally decreasing impact on an individual as another person is added to a social situation. That is, the addition of a fourth person should have a greater impact than the addition of the eighth if individual difference variables are held constant. Specifically, Latane proposed social impact (I) should equal some root (t) of the number of sources (N) times a constant (s) or I - sNt, where t \< 1. To support the second principle, Latane and Harkins (1976) sought to determine if a power law applies to the multiplication of impact prediction. Ten of 26 introductory psychology students were used in a pretest with the remaining sixteen used in the main experiment. The main experiment involved four cross-modality matching tasks. In two of the tasks, subjects matched brightness of light with sound levels and loudness with levels of luminance. In the other two, subjects were asked to imagine reciting a poem in front of audiences of size one, two, four, eight, or sixteen, whose faces were presented on colored slides. Subjects were to make the light as bright or the sound as loud as they would be anxious, nervous, or tense in performing in front of an audience whose faces they had just been shown. The audience was composed of males or females in their early teens or late 30\'s. As predicted from social impact theory, tension increased at a decreasing rate as audience size increased. The exponent for the effect of audience size was estimated to be.52. Where the second principle deals with an individual as \< target of social forces, the third principle deals with others with the individual. Increasing strength, immediacy, and number of other people in this situation should lead to a division of impact. Each person in a group should feel less social force than if he/she were the sole target of the social forces. The effect of a social force from outside the group should be some power of people which is negative but less than one. Therefore, the prediction in this situation would be I - sNt, where 0\