Castro, Nolan, Wark Phase II: The Focus Group Report

Phase II: The Focus Group Report

Dr. Emily Messina
Evaluation in Recreation and Leisure Services
RCLS 425-01
Lupita Castro, Alyssa Nolan, Emily Wark
June 3, 2015

Castro, Nolan, Wark Phase II: The Focus Group Report

In this phase, we will look at the results from our focus group and
discuss what our next steps will be in relation to our survey.
Methodology
When developing our interview questions, as a group we wanted to
make sure everyone in our focus group was able to answer all the questions
that we wanted to have answered. Since our topic was Social Media as
Recreation, when providing the questions we wanted to have a list of sites
that everyone knew, or had heard of. That way if we wanted to ask if they
used any specific social media sites, as in Facebook, our focus group knew
what we were talking about.
Questions we used for the focus group:
How would you define recreation in your own words?
What things do you consider recreation?
Do you use the internet to recreate?
How would you define a social media/network site?
What sites do you use?
How often are you on these site(s)?
What is the purpose of time on these sites?
Does this match with our definition of recreation at the beginning?
If not, what would you consider it?
If yes, in what way does it match
Do we utilize social networks in classrooms?
Do you consider Canvas as social media?
When discussing what members had what roles was easy to figure out.
We wanted to make sure we had someone who was fast enough at typing
and was able to catch what everyone was saying so Alyssa took the job of
note taker while Emily and Lupita asked the questions. It was easy to pick
Lupita as the moderator because she has a great ability to get people
talking. Emily made sure we had enough recorders around the group. We
used phones and laptops to record the focus group. Our method was to

Castro, Nolan, Wark Phase II: The Focus Group Report

spread them around the room, so we were able to catch everyones voices
when talking. This way worked very well because we were able to catch the
voices of people who did not talk as loud as others did.
When it came to the focus group one problem we faced was that they
were always talking over each other, or either cutting someone off. After the
focus group, when it came to transcribing it was difficult to catch what
people were saying because of the amount of over talking each other.
Transcribing took longer than it should have, if they did not talk over each
other the process would have been a lot easier.
One of the lessons that we learned as a group was having the people in
our focus group talk one by one and not talk over each other. At the time, it
really did not seem like a big deal, but when transcribing it mattered a lot.
The focus group overall went great because everyone was responsive and
was answering all of our questions, making our jobs easier because we didnt
have to force answers out of them during our time.
Analysis
For our question on how would you define recreation the common
response was the word outlet. When we broke it down further into how our
focus group recreated the response was a resounding physical activity. As we
progressed into the technology, we found out that the group was divided on
whether they used the internet to recreate. They defined social media sites
as something that allowed them to connect with people and have a
personalized account. The most frequently listed sites were Facebook,

Castro, Nolan, Wark Phase II: The Focus Group Report

Pinterest, Twitter, ESPN1, Instagram, and Pinterest. The amount of time on

these sites could not be determined because of the sporadic use on mobile
devises such as smart phones and tablets. The main purpose for the time on
this site ranged for wasting time, communication with long distance family,
and gaining information about people, sports, or crafts. They also stated
that social media could be an outlet. When asked about this use of the word
and whether social media could be recreation, the group agreed that it was
but not in a way, they commonly thought of recreation. The group said that
the use of social networking sites in the classroom was mainly to pass time
in a boring lecture and not to enhance the learning experience. CANVAS was
the main course of action when it came to group work communication. When
asked about CANVAS they all agreed that yes CANVAS fit the definition that
they previously given for social networking sites.
Once we finished the transcription we sat down together to code the
resulting document. We had one person read allowed the line that
corresponded to an entry in an Excel spreadsheet and as a group decided
the primary words encapsulated in the line. This created a flow for us and
gave the codes some continuity. The codes we have are:

Activity
Outlet
Agreement
Leisure
Sports
Personal

Information
Time
Crafting
Sites
Communication
School

Castro, Nolan, Wark Phase II: The Focus Group Report

The pattern that our codes followed was a statement that talked

about a primary code or theme followed by an agreement by the group

or by an individual. The categories that we could see starting were
physical activity and technology. The themes that we were able to
break our codes down into where:

Individual
Information

Sites
Time

For individual as a theme, we have how the drive for social

media is a personal one all relating to one individual person. One

participant states It just depends on the kind of person you are cause
in my mind anything doing something like active is going to be more
recreational to me than like sitting at my computer and cause when I
say research I think homework and I just dont like it. Its whatever
your interests are its going to be different for every single person. This
sums it up nicely for our focus group because it focuses in the
individual and not just the personal reasons for their use.

Within the information spectrum, we have the communication,

sports, school, crafting, and information itself as the codes. The quote that
was most supported within the group was Or when you become friends with
someone new you always have to go through all their pictures and see if
they, like see who they are. Followed by the phrase Facebook Stalking.
This was the way that our group learned about other individuals gathering
information on their life through Facebook posts.

Sites was a major theme mainly because we had them list what

they used. This was a big part of our focus group. We had our group
Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest does like Netflix and Hulu count?
Couse Im all about those. There are also many more sites listed.

The last theme we had was time. A participant stated Ya, so

mostly like during class or like during your waiting for classes to start or your

like waiting for something else to happen so you have like a half hour or
whatever and your just trying to like trying to kill time before youre doing
you go on to like your next activity. This was universally agreed upon by the
focus group after it was stated. The main phrase that followed was killing
time.

Conclusion
Based on our themes we concluded that social media is in fact a

recreational activity and is highly utilized. Although our participants began

this session not believing social media could be a form of recreation, by the
end most of them realized that it is and how much they actually use it.
Recommendations

After seeing that most of our focus group did not realize how
often they actually used social media and what is considered social media,
we want to ask how often individuals use social media and what types of
sites they use. We also want to ask what aspects of social media people
enjoy or find useful.