Question

If you were designing a focus group of tourists or sports event attendees, please discuss the sampling method you would use and the characteristics of those you would include in the study. Why did you pick that size sample, the types of respondents, and how confident you would be with the results.

Answer 1

a focus group of sport event attendees :

first of all, it is not clear what the focus group discussion will be about. Assuming that you want to discuss various sports events, the following points should be kept in mind.

1. use all experts in the group. experts who know about events. pick out various sports eg, football, cricket, tennis.

2. use people who follow these sports and have attended many sports in different stadiums and in various geographical locations.

3. set a number of participants that you would like to have in a focus group. the recommended size is 10 to 12 people. so there can be six sports and two attendees of each sports event.

4. the participants should be heterogeneous, so various themes and opinions can come out. there will also be more content to discuss on. they should be homogenous in age, gender and events attended.

5. they should all have some key attributes such as they follow each of their sports events and have managed to watch them in at least 3 different locations.

the sampling generally used is purposive sampling. that is convenient sampling. this means that you pick respondents that you think can give the best possible answers.

the results are likely to be good if there is a good structure of questions asked. the content should be decoded properly. the facilitator should be able to moderate the conversation without making participants uncomfortable.