Despite the abundance of published material on conducting focus groups, scant specific information exists on how to analyze focus group data in social science research. Thus, the authors provide a ...

/pdf/a-qualitative-framework-for-collecting-and-analyzing-data-in-1sy23fvptl.pdf

A Qualitative Framework for Collecting and Analyzing Data in Focus Group Research

Study objectives: To present an expert consensus, standardized, patient-informed sleep diary. 

Methods and results: Sleep diaries from the original expert panel of 25 attendees of the Pittsburgh Assessment Conference(1) were collected and reviewed. A smaller subset of experts formed a committee and reviewed the compiled diaries. Items deemed essential were included in a Core sleep diary, and those deemed optional were retained for an expanded diary. Secondly, optional items would be available in other versions. A draft of the Core and optional versions along with a feedback questionnaire were sent to members of the Pittsburgh Assessment Conference. The feedback from the group was integrated and the diary drafts were subjected to 6 focus groups composed of good sleepers, people with insomnia, and people with sleep apnea. The data were summarized into themes and changes to the drafts were made in response to the focus groups. The resultant draft was evaluated by another focus group and subjected to lexile analyses. The lexile analyses suggested that the Core diary instructions are at a sixth-grade reading level and the Core diary was written at a third-grade reading level. 

Conclusions: The Consensus Sleep Diary was the result of collaborations with insomnia experts and potential users. The adoption of a standard sleep diary for insomnia will facilitate comparisons across studies and advance the field. The proposed diary is intended as a living document which still needs to be tested, refined, and validated.

/pdf/the-consensus-sleep-diary-standardizing-prospective-sleep-zopxp7l3eh.pdf

The Consensus Sleep Diary: Standardizing Prospective Sleep Self-Monitoring

Contingent work is an increasingly integral part of the world of work, affecting firms' abilities to accumulate knowledge, create value, and establish competitive advantage. Although its growing use reflects a belief that firms can reduce cost structures and increase strategic flexibility, we suggest that in certain contexts, such as dynamic environments, contingent work can be a means of accumulating and creating valuable knowledge. We also discuss implications for other forms of permeable organizational boundaries.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/259057.pdf

The Utilization of Contingent Work, Knowledge Creation, and Competitive Advantage

This paper presents a qualitative study on consumer adoption of mobile payments. The findings suggest that the relative advantage of mobile payments is different from that specified in adoption theories and include independence of time and place, availability, possibilities for remote payments, and queue avoidance. Furthermore, the adoption of mobile payments was found to be dynamic, depending on certain situational factors such as a lack of other payment methods or urgency. Several other barriers to adoption were also identified, including premium pricing, complexity, a lack of critical mass, and perceived risks. The findings provide foundation for an enhanced theory on mobile payment adoption and for the practical development of mobile payment services.

/pdf/exploring-consumer-adoption-of-mobile-payments-a-qualitative-200aushzb6.pdf

Exploring consumer adoption of mobile payments - A qualitative study

Focus groups as a research method: a critique of some aspects of their use in nursing research

Objective. To evaluate and critique reports in the nursing literature in the period 1990–1999 of the use of focus groups as a research method.

Methods. The articles were identified by a computerized search of the CINAHL database and subjected to critical review.

Findings. The result of the search was that very few articles were found that reported on a specific piece of research using the method. Methodological discussions were more common and these were sometimes at a somewhat superficial level without analysis or critique. The largest category of articles was concerned with service development projects. The research-based articles were found to be relatively unsophisticated in their use of the method, in particular in relation to data analysis and social interaction within focus groups. Terms such as ‘content analysis’ and ‘grounded theory’ were used in nonrigorous ways and incompatibility between the underlying research approach and implementation of the method was identified in the cases of phenomenology and grounded theory. Whilst selection of the focus group method was often justified in terms of the benefits that participant interaction could yield, this interaction was rarely reported or discussed in the articles. One author proposed a scheme for analysing this type of interaction, and this is recommended to future researchers as a possible framework for interaction analysis.

Conclusions. The article concludes by calling for more in-depth consideration at the research planning stages of the underlying assumptions of methodological approaches that may be used to underpin focus group research and methods to be used to analyse and report the data generated.

Focus groups as a research method: a critique of some aspects of their use in nursing research

Focus groups: Theory and practice

Explorations and implications of aberrant consumer behavior

BACKGROUND In recent years, the trend for purchasing to establish partnering arrangements that encourage close ties between purchasers and suppliers has taken some industries by storm. The partnering concept, while replete with benefits for purchaser and supplier alike, does raise a new issue which arises from the "open and sharing" arrangements inherent in the concept. One of these issues concerns the security for "trade secrets." Trade secrets are proprietary information about products, processes, research, and customer information that is not general knowledge, from which the owner derives an economic benefit. The trade-secrets issue stems from the fact that in a partnering relationship, suppliers receive more exposure to the internal operations of the purchasing firm, have improved access to the firm's processes, and generally have an increased level of intimacy with personnel in the purchasing organization. In some cases, purchasing firms provide in-house office space to representatives of selected suppliers.[1] As a result, purchasing managers are finding that they are "gatekeepers" of valuable information which flows to and through the purchasing department. It is the need to adequately protect this flow of information that presents a significant risk to the security of proprietary information and, in some cases, the competitive advantage of the firm. For example, General Motors' continuing effort to prosecute its former director of purchasing for allegedly disclosing valuable trade secrets to his current employer emphasizes the increasingly strategic role purchasing managers play in the success of many firms.[2] Purchasing professionals out of necessity have both access and insight into processes, products, and other vital information that may be construed as trade secrets. It is this valuable, secret information to which purchasing managers are privy that often means the difference between success and failure in a particular market. Purchasing managers are exposed to secret information in a variety of ways. Knowledge of the purchased materials going into a product or process gives purchasing managers insights into secret processes and materials content that are not available to the casual or even the determined observer who lacks the knowledge of the purchasing department. Perhaps as a sign of the times, there is another, more onerous path through which trade secrets may be leaked, divulged, or otherwise misappropriated. That path is through malicious misappropriation of proprietary information divulged in purchasing contracts and technology-exchange agreements with suppliers. The Japanese practice of keiretsu, ingrained in the TQM philosophy, encourages close ties between manufacturers and suppliers.[3] From a practical point of view, firms are thus encouraged to minimize the number of suppliers used for a given product or service. In practice, the reliance on only one supplier for a particular item is gaining popularity, since the benefits of such a "partnering" arrangement often outweigh the disadvantages. The ability to leverage financial resources and improvements to just-in-time production systems are seen as major benefits of effective partnering relationships.[4] Other benefits that may result from partnering relate to cost savings that can arise through product design improvements, productivity improvements, reduction of inventory levels, and the reduction of repetitious, time-consuming bidding procedures.[5] For example, improvements in Xerox's cycle time and in its overall performance have been reported as a result of its concurrent engineering/early supplier involvement program that is ingrained in its partnering philosophy.[6] In general, partnering offers and often delivers an improved, symbiotic relationship between the purchaser and the supplier. Still, inherent in such arrangements is the necessity for exchanging information that may be considered secret by one or both of the parties to the agreement. …

Supplier Relationships and the Trade Secrets Dilemma

The impact of shoplifting on retailers and on the public in general is significant. Stores lose revenue, local governments lose tax monies, and the public pays higher prices at the checkout counter, all because of the actions of individuals who shoplift. Because a large percentage of shoplifting is due to the actions of retail employees, an effort that would reduce losses due to employee theft could have a significant impact on the problem. Biorhythmic charting was hypothesized as providing a potential avenue through which the problem could be addressed. This study provides a large-scale test of the relationship between biorhythm criticality and shoplifting. A managerially useful relationship was not discerned. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

A large‐scale test of the biorhythm‐shoplifting connection hypothesis

Firms in the United States have enjoyed different types of legal protection for their intellectual property rights for years. Trademarks, copyrights and patents are among the legal instruments which have allowed varying levels, types and lengths of legally protected property rights. Such rights, however, have weaknesses which sometimes lead to the inadequate protection of business and competitive information. For instance, patents are good for only seventeen years (unless extended). In addition, to gain legal protection under U.S. patent laws it is necessary to publicly disclose the "secrets" inherent in the product or process that is patented. In cases where the courts decide that the Patent Office improperly issued a patent the invention would have been disclosed to competitors to the detriment of the patent owner. Also, patent law offers no protection for secrets such as customer lists or other information items not typically construed as involving physical products or processes. Indeed, it is this type of information which most concerns business professionals. It should be noted that patent protection and trade secret protection are mutually exclusive (patent application requires the public disclosure of information which would invalidate claims of trade secret protection, while the handling of information as trade secrets makes it virtually impossible to create a valid patent claim). The owner of valuable, secret information is free to choose trade secret protection over patent protection if it is appropriate and the information owner so desires. In the landmark decision found in Kewanee Oil Co. v. Bicron Corp. (1974), it was held that neither the Patent Clause in the U.S. Constitution, nor federal patent statutes preempt trade secrets protection provided through state laws. This holds true for both patentable and nonpatentable information (Commissioners, 1980). TRADE SECRETS Marketers utilize many tools of the trade that have value which provide them competitive advantages. Tools such as customer data, business or management controls, market knowledge, and other "un-patentable" assets are often as valuable as any physical product the marketer may sell or any physical processes, tools, or techniques used in their manufacture. Acknowledging the existence of such trade secrets and recognizing the need to provide adequate and consistent protection for these secrets, the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws approved and recommended for adoption the Uniform Trade Secrets Act in 1979. The Uniform Trade Secrets Act (UTSA) was later amended by the Commissioners in 1985. The Commissioners are charged with developing uniform laws that will allow for consistent treatment in every state relative to needs that transcend state boundaries but for which inadequate protection exists at the federal level. The Uniform Commercial Code and the Uniform Child Custody Act are examples of the Commissioners' efforts. The UTSA as recommended, provides for injunctive relief for actual or threatened misappropriation of valuable information that is deemed a trade secret. Additionally, a complainant may recover damages for an actual loss and for unjust enrichment caused by a misappropriation. If willful and malicious misappropriation is found to exist, the court may mandate an exemplary award up to twice the amount of actual damages (Commissioners, 1980). As of the date of writing this article, thirty-eight states and the District of Columbia (see Table 1) have adopted the UTSA. Minor variations exist between the various states' versions, but they primarily center on the names of the acts (e.g., Louisiana's version is named the Louisiana Trade Secrets Act), the effective dates of implementation, and differences in the definition of misappropriation or theft. It is probable that additional states will adopt the UTSA in the near future. Until then, managers operating in states that have not yet adopted the UTSA will find the plan of action and court decisions detailed here of potential use in their planning efforts. …

Michael C. Budden

Papers

Focus groups: Theory and practice

Explorations and implications of aberrant consumer behavior

Supplier Relationships and the Trade Secrets Dilemma

A large‐scale test of the biorhythm‐shoplifting connection hypothesis

Strategic Planning for Protection of Business Secrets under the Uniform Trade Secrets Act