Talk:Focus group/Archives/2012

Narrow and rather misleading article, due to over-emphasis on Marketing applications

The writers on this page don't seem to know that focus groups were developed by two very well known social scientists from Columbia University -- Paul Lazarsfeld and Robert Merton. Lazarsfeld and Merton started their research before World War II, and did important work with focus groups for the military during the war (on topics such as training films for the troops, homefront morale, and the point-system used for determining in the order in which troops would return home at the end of the war).

Ernest Dichter was indeed an important influence on focus groups as they moved into the field of marketing from the 1950's onward. As noted, he is also largely responsible for the psycho-dynamic approach that dominated early marketing uses, but which was almost entirely absent from the original social sciences applications.

Although the article takes the right overall approach by dividing the content between "marketing" and "social sciences," the sole citation in the social sciences section is a general textbook on qualitative research, as opposed to the dozen or more social science books that are exclusively about focus groups.

In addition, locating this article within the "Business and Economics" section is probably a mistake because focus groups, like surveys and participant observation, are basically general purpose research methods that can be applied to any number of substantive topics -- including both topics from both marketing and the social sciences.

Unfortunately, the current articles on both Statistical Surveys and Participant Observation are categorized under Sociology, so I fear that a request to move the article on Focus Groups to that location would only start a "turf war." To my mind, a better suggestion would be to create a category for "Social Science Research Methods" that would include each of those items, plus other topics that are primarily based in social science research. Each of those key articles could then be linked to separate articles on various "disciplinary" uses and adaptations for a particular method.

The bottom line is that this article has limited and even misleading content to its location with a narrow disciplinary context. The best solution would be to create a new article with a broader base, which would also be linked to (among other things) a more specific discussion of the undeniably important uses focus groups in the overall business domain and more specifically in marketing research.

David Morgan <morgand@pdx.edu> —Preceding unsigned comment added by DavidMorgan1950 (talk • contribs) 15:54, 2 June 2008 (UTC)