Focal group as a technique for data collection in nursing research

Abstract

This article describes an exploratory-descriptive study which was carried out to understand how focal groups are being used for research in Nursing.We examined research in the journals: Revista Brasileira de Enfermagem, Latino-Americana de Enfermagem e Texto e Contexto in electronic and printed form written in Portuguese, English and Spanish from 2001 to 2005. The selection was made by reading the abstract and method section of each of 20 articles. The content was compared to that of the reference bibliography. It was noticed that by and large the techniques used are not systematically organized and the objectives are not clear. Furthermore, it was perceived that there are no thematic preferences and studies encompass topics as varied as institutional care, household care, work organization, the professional training of nurses, work processes, collective health, and the validation of dada collection instruments. We conclude that the use of focal groups in Nursing research has a great potential. However, there is a need to improve our understanding and to disseminate the use of this technique so that methodological imperfections do not impair the quality of the results obtained.