Focus group interviews as a tool for psychiatric nursing research.

This paper explores the potential of focus group interviews in psychiatric nursing research. The main advantage of focus groups lies in allowing a larger number of participants to be included in the research, promoting greater discussion and idea generation than would be possible in individual interviews. However, as a research method the focus group is relatively unknown in psychiatric nursing and is therefore underutilized. The purpose of this article is to outline the potential advantages and disadvantages of focus groups as a research method. The process of focus group interviews is illustrated by the author's own experience with this method.