Extension Education Evaluation TIG Week: Using Focus Groups in Extension Evaluation by Vikram Koundinya

Date: Wednesday, March 5, 2025

Hello AEA365 Readers! My name is Vikram Koundinya, and I’m an Evaluation Specialist at University of California (UC) Cooperative Extension System. My extension teaching is focused on evaluation capacity building of our extension professionals and programmatic staff. I also have a faculty appointment in the Department of Human Ecology at UC-Davis. My research focuses on evaluation methods, needs assessment, and outcomes measurement.

I have been supporting county extension educators, extension specialists, and academic faculty with designing evaluations for their extension programs and grants. Focus groups are one of the commonly used methods in the projects I have been associated with, and I have observed there is not a clear understanding on when and how to use focus groups. In my close to 10 years of experience with using focus groups for evaluation and research purposes, I have gained some insights on properly planning and conducting focus groups and would like to share some tips with you.

Hot Tips

Focus groups are best suited for purposes like needs identification and assessment, program planning, and understanding outcomes. They are not an ideal method for outcome measurement and impact assessment. If you want to use them for outcome measurement or impact assessment, mixing them with other methods like surveys is advisable.
Focus groups work best when the participants are more similar in their characteristics rather than being diverse. The topic of discussion should be affecting all the participants in a more or less similar manner. Having participants with highly different and diverse characteristics can introduce power dynamics and other fears, which may prevent participants from sharing their views freely. We will have more valid data if the group is homogenous.
Results from focus groups are best reported qualitatively, not by presenting frequencies of people responding to a question. Discuss with your program partners in what formats they want the results in. Calculating frequencies doesn’t capture the essence of focus groups. The analysis should focus qualitatively on dominant themes emerging from the data. Extension Methodology Briefs, Focus Group Fundamentals by Grudens-Schuck et al. (2004) and Can You Call It a Focus Group? by Larson et al. (2004) share best practices on when and how to use focus groups.
Do not always expect focus groups to go the way you plan. Be prepared for participants going on tangents by not directly answering your questions. You may not be able to bring them back on track, at which time we have to understand the topic they are talking about is more important for them. The article The Unfocused Focus Group: Benefit or Bane? By Franz (2013) discusses this in greater detail.
Like any other evaluation method, focus groups need to be planned and conducted in a culturally responsive manner. Spend time to understand what kind of foods, refreshments, incentives for participation, and modes of communication work best for a particular participant group.
Virtual or In-person? This is a decision you have to make based on what works best for a particular study or group. I have been hearing from several colleagues in the last one year that they are moving away from virtual focus groups because they can’t observe body cues easily and interpret silence properly.

Rad Resources

Here are two textbooks on focus groups I found useful:

Focus groups. Culturally responsive approaches for qualitative inquiry and program evaluation. 2020. Myers Education Press, LLC. By Jori N. Hall.
Focus groups: A practical guide for applied research (4th ed.). 2009. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. By Richard A. Krueger and Mary Anne Casey.

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