Editing Focus group (section)

===Social sciences===
In the [[social sciences]] and in [[urban planning]], focus groups allow interviewers to study people in a more natural conversational pattern than typically occurs in a one-to-one interview. In combination with [[participant observation]], focus groups can be used for learning about group attitudes and patterns of interaction. An advantage of focus groups is their fairly low cost compared to [[Opinion poll|surveys]] because focus groups allow a researcher to obtain results relatively quickly and increase the sample size by including several people at once.<ref>Marshall, Catherine, and Gretchen B. Rossman. 1999. ''Designing Qualitative Research''. 3rd Ed. London: Sage Publications, p. 115</ref> Another advantage is that a focus group can allow participants to learn from one another as they exchange views and to understand research as an enriching experience. The nature of the focus group contrasts with the more typically extractive nature of traditional social science research which seeks to "mine" participants for data (with few benefits for participants); this difference is especially important for indigenous researchers who employ focus groups to conduct research on their own ethnic group.<ref>{{cite journal|doi=10.17169/fqs-16.1.2087|year=2014|volume=16|last1=Romm|first1=Norma Ruth Arlene|title=Conducting Focus Groups in Terms of an Appreciation of Indigenous Ways of Knowing: Some Examples from South Africa|journal=Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research |issue=1 }}</ref>