ABSTRACT
Focus group research always incorporates more than one focus group meeting. Focus groups also are a more welcoming way to interview members in the community: Residents sit with a group, which helps allay some of the fears they may have about talking with planning researchers. Since focus group research involves a guided conversation with strangers, it is very easy for the focus of the meeting to stray off track. The observations raised in the large focus group meetings are still compromised because of the large number of participants. A unique characteristic of focus group research is how all the observations generated in separate focus group meetings come together into a single rich, detailed data set. An interview guide analysis looks at the focus group comments according to the specific topics brought up in the conversations, as prompted by the interview guide. The Norfolk focus group had 16 participants, more than anticipated but not an unmanageable number.
