The use of focus group interviews in pediatric health care research

Objective: To review and synethize the research material that exists on focus groups with children and adolescents and to provide guidelines for future development.

Methods: Psychlit, Medline and Cinahl electronic databases, as well as the reference lists of those papers consulted were reviewed for information regarding the running of focus groups with participants under the age of 18 years. Both empirical and methodological papers were part of this review.

Results: The utility of focus groups for exploratory research, program evaluation, program development and questionnaire construction or adaptation is reviewed. Based on previous research, guidelines for running focus groups with children and adolescents are provided and suggestions for future development are outlined.

Conclusions: There is evidence to suggest that focus groups are a valuable means of eliciting children’s views on health related matters given an appropriate research question. However, empirical research is required in order to investigate systematically the effect of different processes and variables on the final outcome of focus group interviews.