Participants' Behavior Affecting Impressions on Group Discussion : a Comparison between Professionals' and Nonprofessionals' Viewpoints toward the Interactional Process of Focus Group Interviews

Abstract

This study aimed to manifest moderators' viewpoints toward Focus Group Interviews (FGIs) to design a better form of discussion. The impression-rating of twelve scenes from four sessions of FGI were undertaken on two groups of subjects: professional moderators and nonprofessionals (university students). We compared the results of the factor analysis drawn from the impression-rating, and investigated the relationship between the impressions of the discussions and the interactional processes. The results suggest that whereas the students tend to evaluate chiefly the active atmosphere of the scenes, professional moderators tend to additionally regard 'quality of discussions,' such as how information is elicited, and whether enough information was obtained or not.