Hybrid Focus Groups as a Means to Investigate Practical Reasoning, Learning Processes and Indigenous Activities

In this chapter, we draw on almost two decades of collaborative work using focus groups. Focus groups have provided us with a powerful means to research on citizen reasoning about issues as diverse as railway safety and nuclear fusion power, as well as the ways in which that reasoning can change as people learn more about the technicalities and social context of such technologies. The methods have demonstrated their capacity to allow citizens to reason about technical and complex issues in familiar terms. It has also allowed us to investigate a range of domestic and everyday consumption practices, the nature of which has important implications for environmental sustainability. In so doing, it has enabled us to address the classical potential gap between ‘what they say’ and ‘what they do’—in other words, between practices and accounts of those practices. Our experiments with methodological hybridization seek to promote enhanced participant engagement, and accounts of the world that are grounded in indigenous practices to a greater degree than is sometimes possible with conventional focus groups. Our work strikes a balance between practical application and scholarly understanding. It is not theorized in any conventional disciplinary manner.