ABSTRACT
We have attempted in this book to develop a more expansive understanding of the nature, functions, and affordances of focus groups and focus group work than currently exists in the extant, extensive literature on this general topic. In doing so, we have chronicled the history of focus group research within applied disciplines, as well as its multiple origins outside of areas traditionally associated with empirical research (e.g. the literacy circles of Paulo Freire). We have looked at the ways attending to the specificity of focus group work allows us to develop new conceptual categories to analyze and understand our empirical material. Although this book has been primarily conceptual, we reject the notion that conceptual work can easily be distinguished from the gritty practicalities of research in the field. Because the two are always of a piece, we have interleaved practical advice for researchers and real world examples throughout the book. Importantly, this material has not been added on in an ad hoc fashion. Rather, we have tried to demonstrate how and to explain why the conceptual and the practical are always inextricably intertwined. We extend this impulse to twin the conceptual and practical in this final chapter as we look at contemporary threats to-and future possibilities for-focus group work.
