Day 22

Today marks the second day of work on the analysis of the focus group discussions. Earlier I decided to split the analysis into service users and non-service users, but as I tried to analyse the content of the FGD in this way I found that it was not economical and not effective, as there was too much of an overlap in terms of the information generated in the groups. I also realised that I had never seen any other report split an analysis in such a way previously, particularly when there were very similar questions asked in the different groups. However I continued with the analysis (or reporting of the findings) of the service and non-service users separately first so that I would have actual material to work with, before combining the two into the final analysis report.





So in order to figure out how I should do the analysis, I made use of my access to e-journals and found an FGD analysis online, so I could take a look at the general structure and structure my analysis accordingly. I realise that it helps to reference other works as such, particularly when they are credible and well respected journals (and researchers), as then I would be basing my report on reports found to be credible and reliable with good structure - setting a much better foundation than if I had attempted to fumble along on my own.





This led to me eventually drawing up basic overarching themes that the content of the FGDs mostly addressed, whether in the focus groups for service users or non-service users. Doing so allowed me to be able to fit the questions (whether in the original semi-structured questionnaire or added along the way) according to both the issues the question was addressing as well as the responses drawn out from the questions themselves, via theme. The basic overarching themes were generated according to the objectives of the FGDs, how closely associated they were to other themes (i.e. could a more specific theme be added to another to create a more general theme), and findings generated. From here I began to see where the various paragraphs of the individual analyses could be combined, where I should keep them separate (as not all questions were posed to both FGD group types), and where I needed to rework both the service and non-service users together.




This will need more work over the next few days or so in order for me to fully be able to make the report cohesive and comprehensive enough though. So I since today I focused on the service users and intergrating that into the combined report, tomorrow I will see how to intergrate the non-service user FGDs into the combined report. I must keep the flow in mind though.