Learning from the experience of doing a practice focus group, I did a real focus group last Saturday. I reserved a group study room in undergraduate library to conduct my focus group, because we would not get interrupted, and we would also not interfere with other people’s study. The focus group went on smoothly, and I was glad to see the group discussion going pretty well. Additionally, there are still some space for me to improve and moderate a better focus group discussion. My expected number of participants are six. However, due to the midterm exams and because I couldn’t find a best time that could fit everyone’s schedule, I only got 4 people to participate in my focus group. Since we were friends already, I just asked them to do me a favor. In my focus group, the four participants are all from different majors. One of them is a sophomore, and the other three are juniors. They all lived in university housing or private certified house in their first year of college, and they all live in apartments currently. One of them has 3 roommates, and the other people have 1 roommate. To know more about roommate factor in their decision making, I asked about their roommates. Not surprisingly, they get along with their roommates really well. Apart from roommate factor, they chose their apartments based on location, and amenities. I was a little surprised that they did not mention the rent of their apartments. After I reflected on this, I realized that the reason might be that they are all international students like me, and international students always foresee the expenses of living, and also, their parents usually pay for their living expenses. To figure out whether rent is a factor that they considered, I asked about who pay for the rent. Within my expectation, all four participants said their parents paid for their rents. However, two of them have a part-time job, but apparently the wages cannot cover the rent. One person noted that the wages can only cover her expenses on shoes. Besides, I also let the participants discuss about their current living accommodations.
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As a result, although they found some minor problems and inconvenience about their apartments, they are generally satisfied with their accommodations. Specifically, after listening to other people’s responses about the problems with their apartments, they became satisfied with their apartments because there are both positive and negative aspects of everyone’s accommodation. Through asking the time they need to get to class, I figured location is not a significantly important factor when they chose their apartments. The reason is that they are willing to walk for 20 minutes to class. If they value location the most, they could have lived in an apartment that is close to their class locations.
At the end of our discussion, I asked the participants to rate the factors that we proposed in our research question: location, rent, amenities, and safety. Among their answers, I concluded that the most important factor that affects their apartment choices is safety. The second important factor is location. They consider amenities as nearly the same important as location. And rent is the least important factor in their decision making.
From this focus group discussion, the possible online survey questions that I would like to ask are:
1. Are you an international student? 2. Does the relationship between you
As a result, although they found some minor problems and inconvenience about their apartments, they are generally satisfied with their accommodations. Specifically, after listening to other people’s responses about the problems with their apartments, they became satisfied with their apartments because there are both positive and negative aspects of everyone’s accommodation. Through asking the time they need to get to class, I figured location is not a significantly important factor when they chose their apartments. The reason is that they are willing to walk for 20 minutes to class. If they value location the most, they could have lived in an apartment that is close to their class locations.
At the end of our discussion, I asked the participants to rate the factors that we proposed in our research question: location, rent, amenities, and safety. Among their answers, I concluded that the most important factor that affects their apartment choices is safety. The second important factor is location. They consider amenities as nearly the same important as location. And rent is the least important factor in their decision making.
From this focus group discussion, the possible online survey questions that I would like to ask are:
1. Are you an international student? 2. Does the relationship between you