How many group interviews or focus groups should be run?
Time and resources play a major part in how many group interviews and focus groups will be conducted, but sufficient groups should be run to allow a broad range of views to emerge and the views of important sub-groups of the population to be captured. The importance of the issue can influence the number of groups that need to be run. For example major policy reviews would warrant a more extensive programme of in-depth group interviews than would, say, an assessment of the design of a newsletter. One way to assess whether a sufficient number of groups have been run is when the researcher can fairly confidently predict what the next group is likely to say about the topic. This is an indication that the topic has been ‘saturated’ and it is unlikely that new information will be gathered by running further groups. Analysing and reporting in-depth group data appropriately The purpose of in-depth group interviews is to provide insights and a greater understanding of issues of importance to th
