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Roundtable

Extension Education Evaluation

Practical Strategies for Overcoming Challenges Faced in Conducting Focus Groups in Extension

Stream: Education and Learning

Thursday, October 24, 2024
10:15 AM - 11:15 AM PST
Location: C120-122
Abstract Information: Focus groups are a commonly used data collection method for evaluation and research in Extension. The inherent naturalistic nature of focus groups often unveils unexpected findings and other process related surprises, rendering them unique for understanding diverse perspectives (Grudens-Schuck et al., 2004; Kruger & Casey, 2009). Extension literature is replete with best practices for conducting focus groups, but there are no known publications or repositories that have systematically documented the challenges faced while conducting focus groups and practical strategies that can be used to overcome them. In this roundtable, we will present the challenges we faced while conducting 14 focus groups with diverse participants in Extension in the last 13 years and practical strategies we used to overcome these challenges. We are a diverse research team that has worked at six different land-grant university extension systems in the Western, Eastern, and Midwestern regions of the United States (U.S.), and in community and agricultural development settings. We have years of experience using focus groups for evaluation and research work. We work in different disciplines, including extension program development and evaluation, extension administration and leadership, nutrition, family, and consumer sciences, community, economic, and agricultural development, geography, and other social sciences. Our focus group participants have included farmers in Asia and Africa, Latin America, the Midwestern United States, Latinx parents of young children, private seed company employees, U.S. federal government staff, extension educators, state-level organizational development staff, local community program partners, and college students. The list of challenges we faced and the strategies we used to overcome them can provide valuable guidance to evaluators, researchers, and educators in Extension, community and agricultural development, and other social sciences who utilize focus groups in their work. During this session, we will present an overview of the challenges we faced in 14 of our focus groups and the practical strategies we used to overcome them. The strategies that we will share include providing participants with the written questions prior to or during the focus group, clearly explaining how data will be used and who will have access to data, including community members as intermediaries, employing homogenous and gender-disaggregated focus groups, identifying ground rules and social norms of each focus group in advance, planning for potential lost time, using data from “unfocused” groups as situational analysis or needs assessment data, working with local knowledge brokers, providing for childcare, co-facilitating sessions with local community members, using multiple modes of contact and follow-up, and supplying quiet snacks or refreshments to minimize distractions to enhance the quality of voice recording. Following this brief presentation, we will facilitate a discussion using three questions centered around the topic of ‘conducting successful focus groups in Extension’.