Qualitative
Writing Approaches to Business Focus Group Data
EDRS 822, Advanced Applications of Qualitative Research Methods, May
9, 2002
Overview
The data I have chosen consists of four short “stories”
from four separate individuals from the transcript of a single focus
group conducted among administrators involved in the Continuing Education
and Community Education programs at their respective institutions
of higher education. These institutions are clients of Datatel, the
organization for which I work. By way of background, Datatel sells
administrative application software systems for Student Information,
Financials, Human Resources and Fund-Raising, to institutions of higher
education in North America. Conducted during our annual user conference,
the focus group was conducted to help us obtain a better understanding
of what Continuing Education (CE) is all about, so that we could develop
products and services that meet the business needs of CE. We had already
conducted client surveys that revealed dissatisfaction with our current
product among CE professionals, but the few open-ended questions in
the survey as to why respondents felt that way yielded unclear and
inconclusive results.
The focus group consisted of 12 participants, 10 of whom were from community colleges located in all four geographic regions of the United States. The other two participants were from 4-year, private institutions that have CE programs either as bridges to their regular for-credit degree programs or as revenue centers for marketing courses to the local business community. Participants were recruited via e-mail from our database of clients who had already registered for the user conference. Because the focus group was also serving as a "disaster check” of a large body of anecdotal information that we’d heard over the years, and because of the need to obtain feedback quickly, only one group was conducted. I served as the session facilitator, with two of my colleagues observing from the sidelines, and the 2-hour session was audiotaped and transcribed.
My objective is twofold: a) To determine whether or not the more creative approaches to qualitative writing that are available to social scientists can also be used for qualitative business research. Specifically, I am seeking to combine theoretical elegance and credibility appropriately with the many ways social events can be described (Miles & Huberman, 1994), and; b) To determine whether or not alternative writing approaches contribute to my own ability to “think with the data” beyond what more traditional writing approaches have allowed.
Approaches
The starting point in any type of writing is the understanding of
who your readers are going to be and what action you want them to
take as a result of reading your report. With respect to the focus
group report, my audience consists of corporate decision-makers who
provide the resources (financial and human) for product development.
The action that I want them to take is provide approval for the development
of a Continuing Education product using the focus group data as a
confirmation of client need and thus, a source of revenue. I must
state straight away that my organization is dominated by positivist
thinking, whereby data is perceived as quantitative measurement of
some phenomenon. Qualitative data tends to be viewed with some suspicion,
although we often use qualitative data to flesh out the emotional
motivators of purchasing behavior and product perceptions. In addition,
research reports are written in conventional format exclusively, although
I suspect that this is due to a lack of knowledge of alternative writing
approaches rather than any inherent opposition to alternative approaches.
Consequently, the first approach I have chosen for this module is
one that I would try in the “real world” because it does
not deviate dramatically from what is currently accepted in my organization’s
culture. The second approach would raise a few eyebrows and cause
people to marvel at the degree of passion I have for the subject.
However, it would not render them suspicious of the soundness of my
research methods. The third approach was chosen as an effort to make
the research report a really good read, but it’s highly “orchestrated”
structure would not be accepted in my organization’s culture.
Alternative #1: From universal to specific incidents
Given the nature of my audience and the desired effect I am seeking
to achieve, my first attempt at rewriting the Flexibility narrative
would be to use the universal-to-specific incidents approach used
in Riessman’s (1990) discussion of how divorced men separate
themselves from sadness. Using that approach, the Flexibility narrative
could be written as follows.
Continuing Education administrators tend to view themselves as positioned between the proverbial rock and a hard place, torn between market dynamics, state regulations, and the capabilities of their administrative software systems. A director describes the information overload faced by CE administrators, noting that being market driven means that “the Continuing Education catalog can change from one semester to another" (R). Others also speak of the information overload and express their frustration with how automated systems are adding to the overload rather than relieving it. One administrator describes the reaction of her colleagues when they discovered how much additional work was required to use the automated software system:
When our Continuing Ed folks found out that they needed to go through 10 screens to build a section, whereas in continuing education, there’s one little piece of information on this screen, and one little piece of information on this screen, they were just better off using one or two screens. (L)
This clash between the business processes of an organization and the demands made on it by the environment is common in institutions of higher education and, as Cohen, March & Olsen (1972) have shown, complicates decision processes as the intensity of the clash increases. Problems, choices, and decision-makers arrange and rearrange themselves in an attempt to adapt and be flexible. One administrator sums up the quest for flexibility nicely:
Trying to be as flexible as the change in marketing requires. This was capsulated for me by my predecessor who, after giving me a two-week indoctrination, and then moving to Florida for retirement, said: “You are going to come to find that flexibility is an F-word.” (P)
Strengths and Weaknesses of Alternative #1
This alternative most closely resembles the traditional Executive
Summary found in business reports. Executive Summaries begin with
a concluding statement, cite the specific pieces of data that support
that statement, then link the statement with the current knowledge
base grounded in other research or in the business literature. Similarly,
the example above begins with an assertion about how CE administrators
perceive their jobs, then provides individual quotes from the transcript
as evidence for that assertion. It then links the assertion with the
literature on decision-making to indicate the report’s conceptual
framework. The strength of this alternative, then, is that my target
audience can readily recognize and therefore, accept this alternative
structure as being theoretically sound, credible, and providing “the
voice of the customer” to make the report come alive. As such,
this alternative satisfies my first objective, namely to see what
works for qualitative business research writing.
My second objective was to determine whether the alternative approach
added to my ability to “think with the data”. The short
answer is yes. Although the clash between business process and automated
system performance was evident via the narrative analysis conducted
for Module 3, the universal-to-specific-incidents approach better
conveys the intensity of that clash as felt by the CE professionals
themselves. I see no weaknesses of this approach as applied to qualitative
business research
Alternative #2: Impressionist Voice
Introduced by Van Maanen (cited in Miles & Huberman, 1994) as
a “voice” that defines the relationship between the research
report writer and the targeted reader, the Impressionist voice is
a storied account of a specific incident told in the first person
by the researcher. When in written in the Impressionist voice, the
Flexibility narrative would sound something like this:
This is a story about a gathering of Continuing Education administrators in Washington, DC last March. It was during our company user conference, held at the Marriott Wardman Hotel downtown. I had called the group together to discuss potential improvements to our product, to help us help them do their jobs better. They had all responded promptly and enthusiastically, stating that they were pleased that we were thinking about their needs. The meeting was set for Saturday afternoon, right before the big party. The whole conference was abuzz with energy, positive comments about the conference rolling up and down the hotel corridors.
I made my way to the conference room at about 5:15 PM. I was 45 minutes early, but I wanted to be sure that the room set up was just right, and the refreshments had been delivered on time and as ordered. I had also brought a box of Cross pens engraved with the company logo, as gifts of appreciation to the focus group participants.
Within 5 minutes, the first participant appears at the door. “Am I too early?” she asks, and when I motion her to come in, she heads straight for the refreshment table. Within no time, all the participants are in the room, seated at the circular table and munching on sandwiches, salad and mini-cakes. After a round of introductions, we begin the session with a general discussion about Continuing Education, its purpose, and the types of courses available in a typical CE program.
The first 10 minutes pass uneventfully. Then I ask the respondents to describe the hardest part of their jobs. It’s a standard question used in business research. It helps to identify the business problem to be solved, so that solutions can be crafted, packaged and sold. It is a question I had asked in just about every focus group I have conducted over the past 20 odd years. Regardless of the topic, the answer usually revolved around some process or procedure that was not working as expected. Rational answers for which rational solutions could (in most cases) be constructed.
P., an administrator at a local community college, raises his hand to speak, and without waiting for my acknowledgement, begins talking about a de-briefing session with his predecessor. He ends his story by quoting his predecessor’s definition of flexibility as “an F-word.” I was stunned into silence. Where in the world is this conversation going?
Strengths and Weaknesses of Alternative #2
From the reader’s perspective, the Impressionist voice is far
more engaging than the universal-to-specific-incident approach to
qualitative writing. This time, the almost “whodunit”
style makes the reader feel like he/she is actually in the room, seeing
the participants, hearing their comments, tasting the refreshments,
and experiencing the shock of P’s unexpected language use. As
such, alternative #2 makes for a very good read, with a richness of
context that grabs and sustains reader attention. However, this is
the only strength of the Impressionist voice in this instance. What
is missing is a trigger or cue from the writer to help the reader
make meaning of what he/she is reading, along with theoretical support
for that “meaning” through some reference to a body of
literature. It is the reader that must “think with the data”.
That combination of credibility, theoretical elegance and creative
use of language that I set as my first objective for this module does
not quite materialize. The process of writing in Impressionist voice
does force the researcher to think with his/her own data in order
to create the storied account. As such, this approach satisfies my
second objective for this module.
But would I really use Impressionist voice in preparing my focus group report? I again refer to my audience: busy decision-makers that I want to call to action. To gain acceptance and credibility as “sound research”, I as report writer would have to provide the decision-maker reading with a statement of meaning almost immediately after the Impressionist text, not to mention a “methods” paragraph at the beginning of the qualitative report that provides a heads-up about the use of Impressionist voice in the report, where it is being used, and why. Otherwise, that combination of credibility, theoretical elegance and creative use of language would not quite come off. In a business environment that values “tell me what you’re going to tell me in one page or less”, the Impressionist approach, while interesting, could not be served up alone, but could do well in combination with traditional descriptive writing.
Alternative #3: Fictionalized Vignette
Graue & Walsh (1998) define fictionalized vignettes as snapshots
or mini-movies of a setting, person, or event that weave together
issues into composite tales that illustrate themes that might not
have been observed directly. Unlike Impressionist voice, which presents
a stylized version of what actually occurred, fictionalized vignettes
draw on various pieces of the data set to construct a portrait of
reality as it might exist in the mind of the research subject. Concepts
and ideas are illustrated by getting inside the subject’s head
and describing his/her thoughts in his/her “own”words.
In Graue’s (1993) fictionalized vignette about the mother of
a Fulton kindergartner, the vignette is preceded by an introductory
paragraph transitioning the reader from a description of the research
setting. The objective of the fictionalized vignette is also described.
Following Graue’s example, then, a fictionalized vignette about
the Flexibility narrative would read as follows:
With the purpose of the focus group session described and the warm-up conversations about the nature of Continuing Education, its mission, and purpose completed, the next topic concerned participant perceptions of their own jobs. The central theme of the discussion concerned the concept of flexibility. To provide some insight into how group participants perceived and made meaning of the concept of flexibility, I offer the following vignette about P, an administrator at a local community college.
“The New Job”
P. lowers himself into his chair, draws closer to his desk and slips off his shoes. “One more meeting and I’ll go nuts,” he thinks as he looks at the fully scheduled Month-at-a-Glance page of his Franklin Planner. He had been delighted when he learned he had been promoted to Director of Continuing Education at the college. After 15 years of service to the school and the community, he was finally getting the recognition he deserved. So what if he had had to wait until Q. announced his retirement. He had gotten the job. Now, after two weeks of back-to-back meetings about state funding problems, state regulatory requirements, and corporate partners who cannot tell the difference between education and recreation, he wonders if this position was a reward or a punishment. “Be flexible,” he thinks, recalling the basic principles of management he had read in Peter Drucker’s book.
A student worker rolls in the mail cart and drops a banded bundle of manila interoffice envelopes on the desk. A now familiar dark red letter-size interoffice envelope slips out of the stack. “What’s the IT department complaining about now,” P. thinks with a groan. From the moment he arrived, the IT folks have been complaining about how hard the new software system is to use, how it doesn’t work with the business processes used in Continuing Education, and how much time they spend trying to work around it. “It was designed to be flexible, so we could change things the way we want,” he had told them. But that was just it. IT doesn’t want to change anything, they expect the software to do everything right out of the box. “Be flexible and open-minded,” he thinks. Change is hard on everyone, so why should IT be any different?
Q. walks in the door carrying a sports bag and smilingly declares that he’s off to his retirement home in Florida. R. listens as Q. rattles off a list of issues that need to be resolved in the next 10 days, but adds that there are no resources readily available to completely solve the problems this fiscal year. Be creative, Q. offers. “I guess I’ll have to be flexible,” P. answers.
Q. turns around and heads toward the door. “You are going to come to find that flexibility is an F-word,” Q. declares.
Strengths and Weaknesses of Alternative #3
The challenge of this particular alternative is that it works only
as well as the writer’s ability to tell a story, to employ the
skills of the fiction writer to make the research themes “live”
in the words and actions of the person at hand. The researcher-writer
that possesses those skills can put flesh on the bones of an idea
that is central to the research, but may be ill-defined or ambiguous.
The absence of those skills, on the other hand, can produce text as
painful to read as a supermarket paperback. This dependence on the
researcher’s literary skills is both a strength and a weakness
of the fictionalized vignette. Another challenge of this alternative
is the researcher’s ability to persuade the reader to set aside
what “really” happened and accept the researcher’s
interpretation of what could have happened based on the contents of
the field notes. In this instance, I use various conversations in
the focus group transcript to create a parallel reality that covers
a point in time prior to the actual focus group session. That parallel
reality illustrates what the Flexibility narrative means to the focus
group participant who began that narrative with his story about his
predecessor. The ambiguity of the concept of flexibility becomes clear
as the reader walks through P.’s mind and observes how he refers
to flexibility at each point of frustration. The introductory paragraph
helps to pre-condition the reader to the intent of the vignette, but
the reader still must decide to go along or not. Thinking of the audience
for whom I write, I can safely and candidly say that the fictionalized
vignette would be dismissed almost out of hand.
Conclusions
For me personally, applying these three writing approaches was a most
enjoyable experience, because it allowed me to work with language
in ways I normally have little opportunity to do. Further, I was able
to feel P.’s pain, to live where he lives in terms of the competing
interests pulling him and his colleagues in various directions, and
the hope that technology systems would somehow miraculously make it
all right.
With that said, I return to my starting point about knowing who my reader is and what I want that reader to do with the report I provide. To ensure that the business decision-maker reads my qualitative report, deems it to be theoretically and methodologically sound, and persuasive enough to respond to my call to action as I expect, I would use the universal-to-specific-incident approach and the Impressionist voice approach to illustrate the key themes or concepts I draw from my data. I would embed segments written in Impressionist voice into “traditional” evidence-based description, so as to ensure acceptance while enhancing persuasion. Fictionalized vignette, however, is too risky given my particular audience, although the approach itself can be dazzling when employed by a skilled writer.
The main lesson learned here is that the writer has a choice of approaches,
to be employed when he/she feels that an approach best represents
the central ideas uncovered and also maps well to the intended audience.
The good news is, I can use any of these approaches to help me during
the analysis process, but still write the report in the manner I know
best suits my audience.
References
Cohen, M.D., March, J.G., Olsen, J.P. (1972). A garbage can model
of organizational choice. Administrative Science Quarterly, 17 (1),
1-25.
Graue, M.E. (1993). Ready for what? Constructing meanings of readiness for kindergarten. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
Graue, M.E. & Walsh, D. (1998). Vignettes in Studying children in context (pp. 218, 220-228). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Miles, M.B. & Huberman, A.M. (1994). Qualitative data analysis: An expanded sourcebook. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
