Pearls, Pith, and Provocation Planning and Recruiting the Sample for Focus Groups and In-Depth Interviews

In this article, the authors address the importance of sampling and recruiting for focus groups and in-depth interviews. They draw on a synthesis of the literature and their research experience and propose a three-stage checklist summarizing strategies that worked for them and addressed some of the problems described in the literature. The strategies proposed involve the three stages of prepare, contact, and follow-up. The prepare stage involves find-ing information sources and key contacts or champions, discovering related projects, and drafting alternative samples. The contact stage involves negotiation with key contacts and potential participants, confirmation, and plans for continued involvement. The follow-up stage involves feedback and continuing links in public events, action, and advocacy result-ing from the research. The preparation and follow-up stages can require considerable time and resources, which, if not available within grants, can be provided through partnerships with community agencies or by seeking supplementary resources. We agree with Baum (1998), who states that Most published research presents a sanitized view of the research process. A new-comer to research would gain the impression from published accounts that research was generally a smooth, logical process in which little goes wrong and which is immune from the vagaries and politics of everyday life. In practice, it is rare for such immunity to operate. (p. 112) Baum goes on to suggest that social scientists have brought to the public health re-search endeavor a tradition of reflection in their research practice, opening up their processes to take an honest look at them. In this article, we start from our observa-tion that textbooks and reports about qualitative research using focus groups and in-depth interviews frequently stress the importance of sampling and recruiting