Reflecting on asynchronous internet mediated focus groups for researching culturally sensitive issues

MacNamara, Noirin, Mackle, Danielle, Trew, Johanne Devlin, Pierson, Claire ORCID: 0000-0003-0961-7157 and Bloomer, Fiona (2021) Reflecting on asynchronous internet mediated focus groups for researching culturally sensitive issues. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SOCIAL RESEARCH METHODOLOGY, 24 (5). pp. 553-565.

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Abstract

Internet-mediated focus groups (FGs) have become a feature of qualitative research over the last decade; however, their use within social sciences has been adopted at a slower pace than other disciplines. This paper considers the advantages and disadvantages of internet-mediated FGs and reflects on their use for researching culturally sensitive issues. It reports on an innovative study, which utilised text-based asynchronous internet-mediated FGs to explore attitudes to abortion, and abortion as a workplace issue. The authors identify three key elements of text-based asynchronous online FGs as particularly helpful in researching culturally sensitive issues–safety, time and pace. The authors demonstrate how these elements, integral to the actual process, contributed to ‘opinion change/evolution’ and challenged processes of stigmatisation centred on over-simplification, misinformation as to the incidence of a culturally sensitive issue in a population, and discrimination.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Abortion, online focus groups, qualitative methods, sensitive research
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	11 Jan 2021 10:29
Last Modified:	18 Jan 2023 23:04
DOI:	10.1080/13645579.2020.1857969
Related URLs:	Author Publisher
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3112789