DISPLAYING OPINIONS - TOPICS AND DISAGREEMENT IN FOCUS GROUPS

Focus group discussions are now widely used for gathering data, in soc ial science as well as in commercial marketing and public opinion rese arch. One appeal of focus groups is that in some ways they seem like e veryday talk, but their effectiveness depends on a tension between the moderator's constraints and participants' interaction. The moderator introduces and defines topics, but participants can shift, close, and interpret them. The moderator elicits disagreement in a way specific t o focus groups, but participants manage their disagreement. Thus we se e not simple control by the moderator, but a complex collaborative pro ject operating under the shared assumption that the purpose of the dis cussion is to display opinions to the moderator. These findings extend the analysis of conversation in institutional settings and contribute to a methodological critique of the reification of attitudes and opin ions in some social science research.