David L. Morgan is a professor emeritus in Department of Sociology at Portland State University. He is a sociological social psychologist, who is widely known for his work on focus groups, including his book, Focus Groups as Qualitative Research, and as coauthor of The Focus Group Kit. In addition, he has worked extensively on mixed methods, including a book for SAGE, Integrating Qualitative and Quantitative Methods. Most recently, he has published Essentials of Dyadic Interviewing for Routledge, and A New Era in Focus Group Research, co-edited, with Rosaline Barbour, for Palgrave.
David L Morgan covers the wide range of practical tasks that need to be done in the course of a research project when using focus groups. Throughout, Planning Focus Groups emphasizes the clarifying purposes of the research project in order to collect data that meet the goals. The author extensively and concisely covers the basic decisions that are necessary to plan a research project using focus groups, such as who should be in the groups, the total number of groups, their size and much more. This volume also features a detailed discussion of personnel and budgets. Among the other topics covered are recruitment, selecting locations, and recording and managing data. The author also covers a large amount of practical material such as checklists and recruitment tools.
