ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of the focus group methodology in the interdisciplinary field of disaster and emergency management. Based on the review, the authors argue that, despite new and innovative developments in the field, the emergency management literature has yet to take full advantage of the focus group method or address the method’s limitations. While emergency management research collects both textual and non-textual data from focus group discussions, it tends to overlook the optimum size of focus group participants, confidentiality and privacy concerns, and the method’s strengths in terms of analyzing data at the individual, group, and interaction levels. Furthermore, emergency studies published in academic journals provide minimal data on the method itself (e.g., sample size) and the context within which the focus group research (e.g., place) was conducted. The chapter provides a checklist to guide researchers in successfully implementing this methodology.
