Work-family matters in the workplace: the use of focus groups in a study of a UK social services department

Abstract

The article shows how talk and the expression of feelings about work-family matters in the workplace are generated within the research encounter and how they are shaped by the characteristics of the focus group. First, it outlines the study. Second, it discusses the conditions under which the focus group method was implemented in practice, thereby pointing to the limitations as well as the strengths of its application within an organizational case study. Third, it shows how focus groups are sites in which participants forge relations with one another. In particular it argues that participants can set discussion agendas and/or can act as accomplices in the sense that they are complicit in negotiating implicit understandings with one another which may drive the direction and/or tone of the discussion.