Focus Groups as a Library Assessment Tool

Graham R. Walden “Focus Group Interviewing in the Library Literature: A Selective Annotated Bibliography, 1996-2005,” Reference Services Review 34:2 (2006): 222-241.

Focus groups have been widely used to evaluate library services to their customers. In this paper, author Graham Walden conducted a thorough literature review on the use of focus groups in libraries, and found that they have been used to evaluate services across libraries functions, including administration, cataloging, reference, information literacy, and more.

Historically, focus groups came into use in the 1920s in social science research. It gained broader use as time passed, eventually coming into application in libraries. Walden describes the four steps of the focus group process: planning, recruiting participants, conducting the discussions sessions, and analyzing and reporting the results.

In this literature review, Walden discusses one book, three book chapters, and twenty-one papers published in 15 journals. This review and the publications discussed in it will be very helpful to anyone considering or planning a focus group-based research project. Walden’s discussions of the strengths and weaknesses of each paper will guide others in planning their projects. For example, several of the papers reported that they had used in-house moderators in their focus groups. This is viewed by Walden as a weakness, as focus group members might not be completely honest in front of someone they know. Another weakness he found with several of the studies was the practice of taking notes rather than recording the sessions.

My interest in focus groups is less on their use to evaluate library services to students or faculty, and more on their use in determining service quality within the library. Might focus groups be applicable to evaluate services that technical services or library systems units might offer to the rest of the library? Ultimately, the faculty, staff, and students are all our customers, but often our immediate customers are the librarians and staff within the library; that is, our colleagues. Our organizations might be small and we might not have funds to hire an outside moderator. Is it possible to conduct focus groups within our libraries that will still provide us with useful feedback about the services we offer? Are we offering the services our customers want? How well are we meeting their needs? Are there things we should be offering that we’re not? Are there things they would like us to do that we don’t currently do? Are there things we could be doing better?

A focus group that consists of co-workers who know each other, and moderated by someone they know, and which is not recorded or transcribed, may not be scientifically valid in the same way as a focus group that meets those standards, but could it still be useful from a managerial perspective?