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| Students Speak Toolkit > II. The Focus Group Blueprint > C. Analyze and Report > 1. Form an analysis team. |
One way or another, you must form an analysis team. Members will be responsible for uncovering the key findings of the focus groups, producing a written report, and presenting the report to the appropriate audience. In this section we present our primary recommendations for your analysis team. Keep in mind that the focus group facilitators (student or otherwise) will be particularly valuable members of the analysis team.
Primary Recommendations
If you are conducting an effort in an individual school...
If you are conducting an effort in a cluster of schools...
If you are conducting an effort in an entire district...
The analysis team leader should acquire the focus group schedule (see a sample schedule) from the logistics team and meet with team members at least once before the focus groups take place to divide up responsibilities. Based on decisions made back in the design stage, analysis team members will either obtain verbatim transcripts from the focus groups or produce their own notes while listening to the audiotapes. Team members should make arrangements for picking up the audiotapes from the appropriate site manager. If team members plan to listen to the groups as they take place - using the "headphones outside the room" approach - they will also need to be in contact with the appropriate site manager. If you are relying on transcripts as the basis of your analysis, arrange for multiple copies of each transcript and distribute them to the appropriate team members. Please ask all team members to note the confidentiality cautions in the next section.
Before the analysts begin their work, you will need to underscore the critical importance of neutrality. Good analysis is as free from bias as possible. Ask the analysts to identify and recognize their own biases before they start their work and to push them to the side. Request that they let the data - and not their own biases - guide them.
If you are analyzing focus groups that took place in your own school, it is particularly important for you to take steps that will help ensure neutrality and confidentiality. Producing verbatim transcripts in which all names and identities have been removed is one good way to ensure confidentiality. Here are some other strategies analysis team members may want to employ.
Intrapersonal strategies for ensuring fairness and neutrality
As you carry out your work of analyzing the focus groups, keep in mind these self-reflective questions:
Asking yourselves these questions - and paying attention to the answers - will go a long way toward making sure that you are carefully considering all the views expressed in the focus groups, even those that may be a little hard to swallow.
Interpersonal strategies for ensuring fairness and neutrality
We strongly recommend that analysis team members work in pairs or in groups of three on the analysis of focus group sessions. This recommendation applies to any kind of effort - individual school, cluster of schools, or district-wide. For example, if you are conducting a district-wide effort, you can assign a group of three team members to analyze all the middle school groups or all the female student focus groups; if that won't work, you can make assignments according to your analysts' schedules. For individual school efforts, you can assign analysis team members to work on the groups involving a particular grade or gender. Encourage members to share ideas with one another and to review the results of the focus groups together. The more your analysts work together, the more confidence you will be able to place in your findings. Additionally, the more people who read the same transcripts or listen to the same tapes, the greater the guarantee that you haven't overlooked some important pieces of data and that you haven't been one-sided in your assessment of the focus group results.
Before analysis team members begin their work, it is important for all members to understand the kinds of information for which they will be looking. We present some "Analysis Basics" below that will help the members of the analysis team develop that understanding.
You may want to make handouts or information sheets for analysis team members outlining these basics. Talk through the steps so that everyone is on the same page and knows what to do and how to do it. Use your first meeting to discuss the following basics of analysis:
Next: Produce a record of the focus groups and draft notes.
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