Yet group pressure challenges participants to be more realistic" (Yovovich, 1991). Furthermore, the focus group is more realistic in simulating the thinking and talking society. People are social creatures who interact with others. They are influenced by comments of others and make decisions after listening to advice and counsel of people around them (Sink, 1991). A deficiency of mail and telephone surveys and even face-to-face interviews is that these methods assume that individuals form their opinions in isolation. By contrast, focus groups place people in natural, real life situations (Albrecht et al, 1993; Morgan, 1993; Calder, 1977; Sink, 1991).
Proponents of focus groups argue that they can be profitably combined with other data collection procedures (Loftland & Loftland, 1984; Blumer, 1969; Babbie, 1989; Fuller et al, 1988; O'Brien, 1988; Converse & Presser, 1986; Wolf et al, 1988: Knodel et al, 1984). Focus groups are useful for orienting oneself to the new field, for generating hypotheses, evaluating different study populations and for getting the participants interpretations of the results. The scope provided by the group interview makes it especially useful as a preliminary step to developing questionnaires (Calder, 1977). Desvousges & Frey (1989) argue that "focus groups are a valuable tool in the questionnaire development process". By using focus groups before questionnaires one can learn the vocabulary of the respondents and discover the thinking pattern of the target audience. Focus groups elicit a great variety of otherwise unanticipated responses and ensure a more adequate coverage of responses in questionnaires. Clues to the problems that might develop can also be provided. Focus groups can be used at the same time as quantitative procedures for triangulation purposes (Webb et al, 1965; Denzin, 1989; Miles & Huberman, 1984). They provide additional methodological rigor and can be used to confirm findings and to obtain breadth and depth of information.