Focus Groups In Homeland Security Preparation Critical Thinking Examples

Participation recruitment Recruitment involved the posting of flyers in the community in Spanish and English to describe the study. The posts described the participants’ eligibility as Latinos, aged 18 years old and above and born in Mexico or Central America (Brians, Willnat, Manheim & Rich, 2011). The recruitment was also explicit in requiring one adult in a household to participate.Data collection The data collection began by drafting discussion guide in English and then translating to Spanish. The bicultural and bilingual facilitators who were Latinas are the ones that led the groups at the community levels. The groups involved 6-10 participants in the span of two hours. According to Brians et al (2011), the information gathered ended up audio taped and transcribed in English and Spanish. Tapes in English ended up transcribed and translated into English.Analysis Content analysis ended up applied to assess core patterns and consistencies (themes). The grounded theory led to themes discovery from the data in consideration of the pre-identified domains effect. Themes identification was from the read transcriptions and team discussion while sub-themes from texts (Daves, 2012). The investigator then reviewed every transcript and coded the statements of participants from the sub-themes and themes. Lastly, coders resolved the differences in coding to come up with initial and final agreements using Atlas.ti software of version 5.0.Bias in the processes I believe that there was bias in the participant’s recruitment process. Participants got themselves into the discussion through self-identification offering a chance for an irrelevant target group. There was a bias during data collection as well by the translation of English to Spanish. There is likelihood that the original information for discussion might end up changed during translation. There might be bias also during data collection as participants ended up given incentives like dinner to participate (Daves, 2012). Incentives could lead to offering data that seem to please the researchers.Sample representation and results analysis The results of the samples were not a representation of the Latinos population because the participation did not show a balance in the sub-groups basing on factors like gender and age. For instance, the majority of the participants were females accounting to 72% meaning a low number of male ended up used (Brians et al., 2011).

References

Brians, C.L., Willnat, L., Manheim, J., & Rich, R. (2011). Empirical political analysis: Quantitative and qualitative research methods (8th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
Daves, B.K.,(2012). Human services effectiveness in focus group and round table discussion reports. Madison, Wis.: Dane County Department of Human Services.