Focus Group Administration in Disaster Research: Methodological Transparency when Dealing with Challenges

Abstract

Focus groups are a cost effective and efficient methodological approach to generating data on disaster victims’ experiences. However, their administration is fraught with a number of challenges. Although the challenges faced by researchers are known to those that practice this data acquisition technique, the obstacles and the strategies for overcoming them are not well documented in the literature. This lack of transparency leaves focus group studies, as rigorous as they maybe, open to questions of validity and replication. Therefore, this paper seeks to provide an overview of how disaster scholars are discussing their focus group methods and processes. Examples from the disaster literature are provided from a sample of articles published in Disasters and Natural Hazards between 2005 and 2018. By being more transparent about the challenges of conducting focus groups, disaster researchers using this technique can produce higher quality studies that are more rigorous and replicable.