Focus Group Mayhem

In the quest of writing my final thesis, I have finally managed to complete part of the qualitative research, by doing three focus groups. I have never thought that it would be so hard to gather 24 people, by offering free chocolate and cookies. Luckily, students actually showed up for this research and I had people to moderate in front of.
It was fun and it had a lot of "surprises": people telling me half an hour before the focus group that they couldn't come, people laughing at each other for no reason, people fighting about unrelated to the research topics, without even knowing each other prior to the interview session etc..

I found out I really liked doing this, although I have a lot more to learn about moderating focus groups. A lot of insights came out and a lot more will reveal themselves after I analyze the FG videos.

After moderating, participating and observing focus groups, I have to admit I like moderating best. Maybe because my personality is dominant and stubborn in many aspects of my life or maybe I secretly like to be a professor and never admit it, but moderating is exciting, it can test your patience and your interviewer skills, it can even be a great crisis management training.

Overall it was the most existing part of this final thesis, which I have to be done with in a week. The countdown begins!

...but before that, yesterday was the anniversary of 1 year since we left for the States. There are a lot of sweeeeeeeeet memories, a lot of fun facts, a lot of songs that remind me every day that last summer was the best summer in my life.

Here's Gym Class Heroes. Close your eyes and imagine you're driving to San Francisco :)




...we are fragile...