They are the same. Focus Group Discussion is a discursive interview with a group of interviewees ranging from 6-12 on important issues in a research. When the investigative questions on the interview guide used by the researcher are asked, members of the group share their views and discuss with each other with the researcher assuming the role of a moderator.

It is a great, viable strategy in Cultural Anthropology in seeking information from local people. It helps them to be open, feel free and bold in sharing their views since they have the support of their kinsmen and society members unlike the personal interviews. After all, when s/he tends to forget aspects of his/her delivery, s/he is assured that others in the group would serve as prompters, bolstering his/her confidence to give out information. I have been using this great instrument for the collection of relevant data in my phenomenological studies in my area of research (Culture, Anthropology and Environmental Studies).

Dickson Adom

• Interviews and focus groups are the most common methods of data collection used in qualitative research
• Interviews can be used to explore the views, experiences, beliefs and motivations of individual participants
• Focus group use group dynamics to generate qualitative data

I would like to know whether focus group discussion and focus group interview are the same?

Focus group discussion & focus group interview are the same i.e. is a data collection method based on interviewer asking some open or semi-structure questions with 5-8 participants to collect certain data in a typical qualitative research. In certain focus group sessions, they were video recorded for subsequent data analyses after informed consents were given by the participants.

Focus group discussions and focus group interviews both deal with a group of people. Though it is a good way of collecting data, however it has its own challenges. Depending on the context, though the number may vary from a range of 6 to 12, from my experience, ideally 6 to 8 is a good number. Also, gender matters. From a different cultural background, it is hard to conduct a focus group with men and women at the same time. With prior permission, you can record the discussion with an interview recorder. Video recording may not be appropriate in certain context and also people may not be comfortable in video recording.

I really think it is just a matter of semantics. Maybe you will find this reference of value:

Krueger, R. A., & Casey, M. A. (2015). Focus groups : a practical guide for applied research. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications.

thank you to all for sharing your experiences and knowledge. i would like to ask suitable method for my research work. which method give me better results. my research plan is to use PAR in phase I to collect all the data and construct together a model. Firstly, before we plan a model i will take face-to-face interview and collect data from stakeholders. then our research group analyze and prioritize the problem. then we share our data to stakeholders. this time we will use group disscussion. so which method FGD or FGI is best for my work ?

Please suggest and comment to my work. Everyone is welcome if interest and i would like to invite all of you.

best regards,

Saw

As everyone else has said, FGD and FGI are two names for the same thing. You can think of it as a form of interviewing where the data comes from a group discussion.

Your idea of following up on a PAR study by conducting focus groups with stake holders makes sense to me. One issue you will want to think about is the homogeneity of the groups, i.e., whether you want to mix different types of stake holders in the same group.

The most common advice is to "segment" different categories of stake holders into different groups, so that the composition of each group is relatively homogeneous. This minimizes potential conflict within the groups, and gives you the opportunity to make comparisons between different groups. But if your stakeholders are used to interacting with each other on a relatively routine basis, then there probably would not be a problem mixing them together in your groups.

Thank you Mr.David. I think the different stakeholders cannot segment totally but we will think this fact in our study. we know that we cannot arrange policy makers and the basic workers and the customers at the same time in all discusion groups. however, we can put together customers and the workers in discussion because they are related to each other. we will listen their opinions and suggestions from them. then we will present to policy makers/regulators at first. less arguments through making dealing at finally. then we can arrange them together. is it possible way for our work? this is only my plan. but i am not sure about the real situations. Please suggest me if you're available Mr.David.

Million thanks,

Saw

Yes, it makes sense to produce comments in one set of groups and then get reactions to them from a later set of groups. But you do need to be careful to protect the privacy of those who provide the comments, which means you need to edit that content so that the person who said it is not identifiable.

Thank you so much Mr. David. I will try the best.

regards,

saw

Focus group discussion (FGD)and focus group interview (FGI) are the same as a method of data collection in qualitative research. The discussion is centered on a particular topic or experiences while participants are more homogenous group of 5-12. Interviewing technique uses open- ended questions, or semi-structure questions with probe questions for clarification of points. The interview discussion are video/audio recorded with participants' permit and transcribed by research assistant within 24hours after the discussion to enable data analyses before next FGD/FGI. Discussion ends when data saturation is attained.