When conducting human subjects research, federal regulations require that there are adequate provisions in place to protect the privacy of participants and maintain confidentiality of any data collected. In research, confidentiality typically means that the participant’s data will not be shared with anyone outside of the research team and funding agency (if applicable). The Institutional Review Board (IRB) ensures these protections meet federal and institutional requirements and that they are clearly documented by researchers. In most cases, researchers collecting survey data and individual interviews should guarantee their participants confidentiality. However, researchers conducting focus groups cannot always guarantee their participants full confidentiality. Focus groups include a small number, typically less than ten, of demographically diverse or similar people. Researchers may interview focus group members to evaluate a program, assess the common traits/experiences of group members, or pose problems to seek the groups proposed solution.
This blog post will outline the following considerations for researchers conducting focus groups:
- Guaranteeing confidentiality in focus groups
- Audio and visual recording
- Data security and privacy
Guaranteeing Confidentiality in Focus Groups
Due to the nature of focus groups, researchers cannot guarantee confidentiality to their participants. While researchers can ask that focus group participants keep all information disclosed during the group confidential, there is no guarantee that participants will refrain from sharing their experiences during or once they have completed the research study. As a result, the researcher should disclose this risk to privacy and confidentiality on the consent form.
On consent forms for studies involving focus group members, researchers can use language such as, “Your identity will be known to other focus group participants and the researcher(s) cannot guarantee that others in the group will respect the confidentiality of the group. As a researcher, I ask that you keep all comments made during the focus group confidential and not discuss what happened during the focus group outside the meeting."
Audio and Video Recording
In some cases, researchers may need to audio or video record a focus group session for either transcription or coding purposes. The consent form should always disclose which activities will be recorded, how the recordings will be stored and used, and whether the recordings will be deleted after a set amount of time. Researchers should offer participants the option to be recorded, if eliminating the recording does not interfere with the study activities.
With focus groups, it may not be possible for researchers to offer each participant the option to be recorded because the study requires audio or video data from the entire group (e.g., the researcher plans to code verbal and physical interactions between group members). In these cases, it should be made clear on the consent form that participants who do not wish to be audio or video recorded cannot participate in the study activities. Researchers should include the following on the consent form:
- Under the section describing the research activities, disclose which activities have mandatory recording.
- A section to consent to audio or video recording (e.g., “Audio recording is part of this research study. If you decide that you do not wish to be recorded, you will not be able to participate in this research study. Please sign below,” followed by signature lines delineating, “I consent to be recorded”, or “I do not consent to be recorded”).
It is common for focus groups to assign pseudonyms for participants to use when referring to each other, as an extra measure of privacy protection. Online platforms such as Zoom offer means to connect focus group participants across distances. If the researcher plans to conduct the focus group with pseudonyms, please verify that all participants have changed or deleted their Zoom profile name prior to logging onto your focus group. This will help ensure that video records do not capture any identifiers, such as the name associated with the participant’s Zoom account.
Data Security and Privacy
While researchers cannot guarantee confidentiality to their focus group participants, they should still take precautions to protect the participants’ data as they would with any other research activity. This means ensuring that the collection, storage, and maintenance plans are in line with TC IRB’s Data Security Plan and that the participants’ data is not shared with anyone outside of the research team. Additionally, if the data can be kept separate from personal identifiers, researchers should consider a plan for de-identification. One way to do this is to assign each participant a unique code (e.g., Teacher_01, Teacher_02, Admin_01) and replace any instances of their name with their code. The “master list” connecting the participants’ names to the code should be stored separately from the data and only limited research personnel should have access to the master list.
While these protections are best practices for researchers conducting focus group activities, the IRB may require further protections be put in place in order to ensure the adequate protections of participants. Each IRB application is reviewed on a case-by-case basis, and researchers should work with their IRB reviewer to determine the requirements for their specific protocol.