Alberto Trobia

Many reports of focus groups are rather poor and disappointing. This is overtly due to the fact that there is not a well-established tradition in the field of qualitative data analysis. Even the most important and widespread handbooks generally fail to treat the matter and are often evasive about focus group data analysis. This paper summarizes the scarce literature on the analysis of focus group data and tries to suggest an integrated method that satisfies the descriptive purpose as well as the need to take into account the particular nature of focus group data as diachronic and group data. Atlas.ti, a well-known qualitative data analysis program, can partly satisfy this need, if used properly, respecting the particular nature of the data collected. The advantages of such a method of analysis, is argued in the paper, can have positive repercussions in the whole field of qualitative research in the difficult road towards methodological rigorousness.