ABSTRACT
In the last chapter, we explored the origins of focus group work as it is currently understood. We highlighted the fact that the “focused interview” was a breakthrough in social scientific work, as well as its prolific uptake across a wide variety of applied fields. These include nursing and the health professions, counseling, marketing, and education. We also noted that, in most cases, focus group work has been put in the service of normative or a priori outcomes-to assess the needs of communities, to devise ways to implement policies, to assess consumer response to products, and so on. We also noted that much of focus group work has evolved in an ad hoc and haphazard manner. Finally, we emphasized the fact that many of the basic principles and practices of the earliest focus group work remain with us to this day. For example, focus groups are still often conceptualized (in practice) as large group interviews. Focus groups are also still often used primarily to complement quantifiable data from surveys, quantitative assessment instruments, and the like, or to help interpret and explain quantitative findings. Given these and other residues of history, we believe that the full potentialities of focus group work remain un-mined.
