Focus Group Interviews: A New Feminist Method

This paper shows how feminist qualitative research can be strengthened and broadened through the development of feminist focus group interviews. The interaction among participants in group interviews provides a valuable resource for studying issues of gender and sexuality. In addition, focus groups can be both consciousness-raising and empowering for the research sub jects and for the researcher herself, and allow for a more egalitarian and less exploitative dynamic than other methods. Drawing on the author's study of the influence of popular culture on the construction and maintenance of "normative sexuality" for women, this paper addresses some of the practical and ethical issues that a researcher must confront when using group interviews. The author addresses different concerns in recruiting participants and making the most of the unique dynamics of a group interview and the kinds of data they produce for analysis. More than most other methods, group interviews provide feminists with the opportunity to conduct research that is consciousnessraising and empowering, research that does not merely describe what is, but that participates in shaping what could be.