Abstract

EXPAR is the LISER Competence Centre in Experimental and Participatory Research. The aim of EXPAR is to improve awareness of and skills in experimental and participatory research methods to strengthen LISER’s position at the forefront of internationally high quality, scientifically rigorous and societally relevant research. One of the activities of EXPAR is to organize seminars with internationally well-known experts.

This particular seminar helps to develop the competences in qualitative methodologies at LISER. Lea will address the following questions: What is a focus group? Why and when to use focus groups in social sciences? How to integrate them in our methodological toolkit? How to facilitate focus groups? How to manage the group dynamic?

Below is a selection of readings about focus groups that allow you to become familiar with the method in preparation of the seminar:

• Cyr, Jennifer (2008). "The Promises and Pitfalls of Focus Groups as a Data Collection Method". Sociological Methods and Research 45(2): 321-259.
• Finch, Helen and Lewis, Jane (2003). "Focus groups", in Ritchie, Jane and Lewis, Jane (éds), Qualitative Research Practice. London: Sage (chap. 7, pp. 170-198).
• Liamputtong, Pranee (2011). Focus Group Methodology. Principles and Practice. London: Sage, ch. 3-5 (pp. 31-86).
• Markova, Ivana (2003). "Focus Groupes", in in Moscovici, Serge et Buschini, Fabrice (sous la direction de), Les méthodes des sciences humaines. Paris: Puf, pp. 221-242.
• Wellings, Kaye; Branigan, Patrick and Mitchell, Kirsti (2000). "Discomfort, Discord and Discontinuity as Data: Using Focus Groups to Research SensitiveTopics", Culture, Health & Sexuality, 2(3): 255-267.

Biography

Dr Sgier is a senior lecturer in qualitative methodology at the University of Geneva. From 2010-17 she was a professor of Qualitative Methodology at Central European University (CEU) in Budapest. She is also an instructor for various graduate programmes where she teaches qualitative methodology for PhD students and post-docs (University of Essex UK; Hong Kong University HKU; Concordia University Montreal; ECPR Methods Schools (2015-19); MethodsNet; CUSO Doctoral Programmes Switzerland). In these capacities, she has supervised and/or advised a large number of PhD students, professionals and MA students doing research on sensitive topics and/or vulnerable populations (such as prisoners, social welfare beneficiaries, elderly people, victims of sexual violence, refugees, patients).

She is the current chair of the Research Ethics Committee of LISER (Luxemburg Institute for Socio-Economic Research), of which she has been a member since 2019. In this capacity she has evaluated over 50 projects on a variety of topics and involving a wide range of (qualitative and quantitative) methodologies.  

She herself has worked on various ethically sensitive topics, in particular on elderly people and social policy (as co-PI on a project on the political rights of older institutionalised people, 2017-20; as senior researcher on various projects on care policies for the elderly in Switzerland, Germany and Scotland; as evaluator of an intervention project for elderly people in nursing homes in 2009);  people with dementia (as senior researcher on a Swiss SNF project on early dementia diagnosis in Switzerland – under the co-lead of Prof. Samia Hurst, Head of the Bioethics Institute of the University of Geneva); and young people (as a senior evaluator for Evalux that was mandated with the evaluation of a youth project on body image and self-esteem).