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Profiling Your Community
Introduction & Instructions for Worksheets 5A, B and C
Gathering information from the people in your community.
Introduction:
"A focus group, or group interview, is an exploratory research method used to help companies gain a deeper understanding of their customers' and prospects' perceptions, feelings, motivations and desires." (Focus Groups by Raymond R. Burke, Kelley School of Business, Indiana University.) In this section, we refer to focus groups as "focused conversations" because we recommend that you focus on this data collection tool as a way to have conversations with groups of residents of your community. The worksheets in this section are designed to help you plan and conduct focused conversations to discover the perceptions of residents about the community where they live, work and play. Be sure to include both library users and non-users in the group conversations.
For more information about conducting focused conversations, we recommend that you read "A Room of their Own: Planning the New Denver Children's Library", School Library Journal. Pamela Sandlian and Suzanne Walters. February 1991, pp. 26-29. Please see the bibliography below for other reading selections about focus groups/focused conversations.
Planning for the focused conversations could be a group activity. The focused conversation sessions can be accomplished by pairs. One person serves as the moderator and another as a note-taker.
Here are some tips for conducting focused conversations:
- Food can be a motivator and an ice breaker. Serve refreshments as a way to say thank you for the participants' time.
- Be prepared.
- Start and finish on time.
- Let the participants tell the story and listen carefully.
- Remember that you are looking for information about the community from the participants' perspective. You are NOT asking them what they think about the library or what they wish the library would do for them.
- Don't be defensive; just listen.
Worksheet 5A:
For this activity, gather the whole planning group or designate 4 or 5 people to work on this project. Use Worksheet 5A to stimulate some brainstorming about possible focus group participants and topics. Topics should be related to your own community's issues and interests.
After you have determined the topics for the focused conversations, begin to develop questions that can be used to start the conversation. The questions should not relate directly to the library. The goal is to find out more about what the participants think about their own community. You will use this information to infer community needs and concerns as you develop the library's plan.
Worksheet 5B:
Worksheet 5B can serve as a checklist as your planning group prepares for the focused conversation. Give yourselves plenty of time to plan this activity, to contact potential participants and give your participants time to plan for the session.
Focus groups should gather people with similar characteristics or interests (retirees, middle school students, mothers of preschoolers, residents of a particular area of your community, residents who speak Spanish, amateur photographers, etc.) The participants should feel comfortable talking to each other and to you. The group should not be too large;
five to seven people is the ideal size. One of you should take notes and another group member should serve as the moderator. Don't forget to formally thank the participants for their time and interest.
You can also use this same process later in the planning process to gather the community's perceptions about the library, its services and programs or to "test market" services you are thinking about implementing.
Worksheet 5C:
This "Idea" sheet can serve as a collection point for findings from the focused conversations. The moderator and note-taker for the focused conversation should try to record their impressions as soon as possible after the session. Be sure to record any specific comments or conversation that added significant information for the community profile or that sparked an idea for the library's plan or services.
| An alternative or additional method for gathering information from the people in your community is "interviewing". Our Guide to Interviewing will help you prepare and conduct interviews as part of your data gathering. See the bibliography below for additional interviewing resources. |
Bibliography:
Bell South, Digital Storyteller. (2002). The Art of Conducting an Interview. (http://www.knowitall.org/bellsouthdigitalstoryteller/training/pdf/interview.pdf)
Burke, Raymond R. (1997). "Focus Groups." Kelley School of Business, Indiana University. [http://www.bus.indiana.edu/mcarterg/clp/focusg.htm]
Community Engagement: When to Use Focus Groups. Minnesota Department of Health. [http://www.health.state.mn.us/communityeng/needs/focus.html]
Gibbs, Anita. (1997, Winter). Focus Groups. Social Research Update. [http://www.soc.surrey.ac.uk/sru/SRU19.html]
Greenbaum, Thomas. (1998, Sep. 14). 10 tips for running successful focus groups. Marketing News. 32(19): 25-26. [Available at: http://www.groupsplus.com/pages/mn091498.htm.]
See also: Articles by Tom Greenbaum for a list of recent articles about conducting focus groups.
Greenbaum, Thomas L. (1993). The Handbook for Focus Group Research. New York: Lexington Books.
Guidelines for Conducting a Focus Group. Center for Urban Transportation Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. [http://www.uwm.edu/Dept/CUTS/focus.htm]
Hutton, R. Bruce and Suzanne Walters. (1988). Focus groups: Linkages to the community. Public Libraries. 27(3).
Krueger, Richard A. & Casey, Mary Anne. (2000). Focus groups: A practical guide for applied research. (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Ledingham, John A. and Bruning, Stephen D. (1998/1999 Winter). Ten tips for better focus groups. Public Relations Quarterly. 43(4): 25-28. [Note: This article is available in full-text through the statewide access to FirstSearch.]
Massey-Burzio, Virginia. (1998, May). From the other side of the reference desk: focus group study. The Journal of Academic Librarianship. 24(3): 208-215.
*McNamara, Carter. (1999). General Guidelines for Conducting Interviews. (http://www.mapnp.org/library/evaluatn/intrview.htm) - This is an excellent, comprehensive resource for interviewing.
McNamara, Carter, PhD. (1998, February 16). "Basics of Conducting Focus Groups." The Management Assistance Program for Nonprofits. [http://www.mapnp.org/library/evaluatn/focusgrp.htm]
Nielsen, Jakob. (1997). The use and misuse of focus groups. [http://www.useit.com/papers/focusgroups.html]
Sandlian, Pamela and Walters, Suzanne. (1991, February). A Room of their Own: Planning the new Denver Children's Library. School Library Journal, pp. 26-29.
Sherraden, Michael. (1998). "How to do Focus Groups." Originally included in IDA Evaluation Handbook: A Practical Guide and Tools for Evaluation of Pioneering IDA Projects. Note: This web site is a Microsoft Word document. [http://www.ln.edu.hk/mkt/courses/howtodofocusgroups.doc]
Terman, Karen. (1996). Getting things in focus: The use of focus groups in Brent libraries. Library Management. 17(2): 36-39.
For links to a variety of web sites with information about Focus Group research, visit Research Methods Resources on the WWW, Qualitative Group Methods: Focus Groups. [http://www.slais.ubc.ca/resources/research_methods/group.htm]
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