The Focus Group Interview as an In‐depth Method? Young Women Talking About Sexuality

This article discusses whether the focus group method can be employed with troubled groups and for the discussion of high‐involvement topics. It analyses focus groups' discourse of high‐involvement topics, such as 'the body', 'relationships', and 'sexuality', conducted with female adolescents aged 15–20 years at a detention home. Contrary to the traditional belief that the focus group method is designed for low‐involvement topics and mainstream groups, our analyses of the discursive devices employed suggest that the method can indeed be used for high‐involvement topics. We also argue that other methods would not have given us 'deeper' insights and that the focus group method can be seen as a less intrusive method to be used in this setting. Notes [1] The project 'To talk about sexual abuse and other difficult experiences: treatment at youth detention centers' (Swedish: 'Att tala om övergrepp och svåra erfarenheter: Behandling på särskilda ungdomshem'), Margareta Hydén and Karin Aronsson. Financed by the National Board of Institutional Care (Swedish: Statens Institutions Styrelse). [2] However, in Cunningham‐Burley, Kerr, and Pavis (Citation1999), the traditional belief that the focus group method is 'shallow' as opposed to 'deep' is being questioned. [3] To argue for the 'naturalness' of focus groups is controversial and discipline dependent. Focus groups may be regarded as a natural method within psychology if compared with the more traditional methods within psychology such as controlled experiments conducted in laboratories (see Wilkinson, Citation1999), while within anthropology and ethnography, the method may be regarded as less natural. Agar and MacDonald (Citation1995) argue that a situation which is controlled, carefully planned, artificially set up and where interaction is explicitly encouraged can never be seen as natural. For social constructionists all interaction is constructed and thereby non‐natural. The focus group method then becomes just as constructed as all other interaction.