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Focus groups have historically occupied a rather “stepchild”-like status within the spectrum of qualitative methods, often viewed as lacking the rigor and depth of one-on-one interviews. Focus group research is often viewed as a straightforward, economical, and less intensive research methodology. This perspective has been recently challenged by many, including feminist scholars who argue that focus groups analysis,76 when it moves away from a strict positivist and market research frame, offers important ways to explore the collective and interactive nature of the production of subjectivity. Focus groups can also allow for debate, disagreement, and thoughtful group reflection that can undermine, challenge, or even subvert researchers’ categories and assumptions about the group.77 They also provide the potential for sharing power in the research process and establishing principles of feminist ethics.

In presenting focus group data methodologically, much of the interaction, contradiction, and interpersonal dynamics are left out or minimized in reporting and analyzing focus group data.78 I am in interested in both the “how” and the “what” that comprise my focus groups. The “how” is the interactional processes that mothers and daughters created in their respective focus groups. The “what” is the content and meaning that developed out of the focus groups. In Black Women’s Health, I use the richness of focus group material to tease out several layers of meaning. I draw on conversational and narrative analysis at the group level—a key strength of focus group data. The focus groups were different in ways that the participants engaged each other, the moderators they had, and the conclusions that they reached throughout the time together. I note areas of clarity, confusion, and disagreement among participants. Where relevant, for the mothers’ groups, I draw on health status, profession, and marital status and other important markers of the conversation.

I pay less attention to individual statements and instead focus on thematic concerns and how ideas are developed through interaction in a group and then across groups. This means looking at how the groups of mothers and their daughters differ. I am then able to analyze all the mother groups in total, all the daughter groups in total, and also make comparisons between matching mother and daughter focus groups, thus adding another level of analytical richness. I also pay particular attention to the group interaction that occurred in the mothers’ groups as it governs my broader interest in how conceptualizations of health are communicated between mothers and daughters.

Taking note of group-level dynamics and including that in one’s analysis is unconventional in focus group research. Wendy Duggleby, however,79 notes that “group interactions are a source of data that is underused and underreported in focus group research.” Paying close attention to the context of group dynamics can offer analytical insights that would otherwise be missed. For example, I noticed that in almost all of the mother focus groups, the mothers engaged each other directly on sensitive issues of health and sexuality and shared experiences that promoted group rapport. They often talked over the moderator and offered each other resources and support, which surprised us. Later, my research team and I reflected on why so few public or private spaces exist for Black mothers from differing backgrounds to come together and share a diversity of experiences about difficult and contested issues (e.g., daughters’ sexual experiences). This allowed me to question the structural factors that prevent African American women’s forums from discussing issues of mothering, health, and sexuality in a safe, nonjudgmental setting. And, finally, it allowed me to ask: How can communities encourage innovative forums that support skill-building and support for Black mothers on difficult and complex issues? It is from this conceptual framework and its complementary methodological approach that the structural framework for this book emerges.

There are multiple approaches to analyzing focus groups and little agreement among them. Despite the lack of coherence about analysis of focus groups, there are three main recurring concerns that need to be addressed. They are conformism, length, and the iterative nature of the questions. I address them here.

Members of focus groups can arrive at consensus too quickly and reflect levels of conformism about a topic that may run counter to their observations and preferences. This was not the case for the participants in my focus groups, especially the mothers. African American women rarely have a time to meet and talk with others about their health needs and concerns about their daughters. All the focus groups were highly engaged and typically did not display signs of conformism about topics. There were a few instances in the daughter groups where consensus emerged quickly. The composition of the ages of the daughters’ groups ranged, so it might have been the case that in certain instances, younger girls may not have spoken up as frequently or forcefully as their older counterparts. They also might have come to consensus from a lack of experience on the topic, lack of knowledge, or discomfort discussing certain subjects in the study setting. Overall, as I note in chapter 1, daughters were highly engaged and enthusiastic participants and thus there was no significant discernable pattern related to age. The guide that we used asked questions from multiple vantage points, thus minimizing the chance of a more homogenized outcome.

The second concern often raised about focus groups is the length of reporting. Focus group reporting produces voluminous data. A key issue becomes representation. If we err on the side of concision, then we can miss the very context of the conversation that supports the researcher’s analytical argument.80 It is more dangerous to summarize and compress so much of the data that the interaction, one of the vital aspects of this method, is flattened and lost. It is also possible to go so far in the other direction that the reader loses the centrality of an analytical point while wading through pages of conversation that wanders across many different topics. This approach can fatigue the reader. I have erred on the side of longer and more robust quotes throughout the book. My goal was to present the reader with enough of the context of the conversation to provide a road map for how components of the conversation were analyzed.81 I also give clear signals about when and why I am focusing on the interactive nature of the discussion.

The third concern is what counts as enough in the reporting of themes comparing multiple focus groups. I rely on Jaime Harding’s suggestion that themes were further explored and developed if they appeared across one-fourth of the groups.82 In this case, I used the standard of three of the five groups (both for mothers and daughters). This seemed to be both commonsensical and a valid goal for making claims that work beyond the set context of groups. Working within these constraints, there are times I stray to follow the unique perspective of a group as an outlier among the others. The tension between exploring the value of what emerges in one group versus multiple groups is something that I wrestled with throughout the analysis.

Finally, a key piece of thinking through the “what” of the findings is the analytical approach undergirding the work. Black feminist scholarship and intersectional research attend to the social location of the researcher (e.g., race, class, and gender), look at relationships of power from multiple dimensions, and reveal systems of power that can be micro- or macro-focused.83

Intersectionality as an analytical tool also helps me to both highlight that African American mothers’ and daughters’ narratives about health have not featured prominently in research—thus providing a context to understand hidden or marginalized experiences—and bring attention to how unmarked categories of health, gender, and power are contributing to the lived experiences of African American women and girls. For example, the discourse on healthy exercise is often presented in a way that suggests equal access (to gyms and workout facilities, in schools, workplaces, or homes) is the preferred and most important approach coupled with individual responsibility. Bringing an intersectional approach that examines more critically how this formulation assumes a class advantage and ignores other possible barriers (i.e., the internal feelings from being a minority in a majority-dominated gym) puts into context some of the mothers’ (and to some degree daughters’) challenges in seeking to be “fit.” Hae Yeon Choo and Myra Marx Ferree note the limitation of intersectional work that only seeks inclusion.84 Instead, they encourage researchers to make visible how dominant unmarked categories shape individual and group experiences. This intersectional work calls attention to African American women’s and girls’ health narratives not just as a “special kind of difference” (than, for example, white women and girls), but to interrogate the structural (and discursive) social organizing principles that shape Black women’s and girls’ health practices.85