What is a focus group? Why do we use them? When should we use them? When should we not? Focus Groups for the Social Science Researcher provides a step-by-step guide to undertaking focus groups, whether as a stand-alone method or alongside other qualitative or quantitative methods. It recognizes the challenges that focus groups encounter and provides tips to address them. The book highlights three unique, inter-related characteristics of focus groups. First, they are inherently social in form. Second, the data emerge organically through conversation; they are emic in nature. Finally, focus groups generate data at three levels of analysis: the individual, group, and interactive level. The book builds from these three characteristics to explain when focus groups can usefully be employed in different research designs. This is an essential text for students and researchers looking for a concise and accessible introduction to this important approach to data collection.

What is a focus group? Why do we use them? When should we use them? When should we not? Focus Groups for the Social Science Researcher provides a step-by-step guide to undertaking focus groups, whether as a stand-alone method or alongside other qualitative or quantitative methods. It recognizes the challenges that focus groups encounter and provides tips to address them. The book highlights three unique, inter-related characteristics of focus groups. First, they are inherently social in form. Second, the data emerge organically through conversation; they are emic in nature. Finally, focus groups generate data at three levels of analysis: the individual, group, and interactive level. The book builds from these three characteristics to explain when focus groups can usefully be employed in different research designs. This is an essential text for students and researchers looking for a concise and accessible introduction to this important approach to data collection.

Political parties in the developing world often face serious electoral crises; from one election to the next, parties can be decisively voted out of national office. What happens to a party that experiences this kind of voter rejection? The literature suggests it will disappear, leaving the party system vulnerable to the inexperience of new political actors. The Fates of Political Parties offers a more nuanced perspective: focusing on a number of individual Latin American countries as well as the region as a whole, it identifies considerable variation regarding how parties survive and even revive after an electoral crisis. The book revitalizes the study of parties as complex entities that rely on a potentially diverse set of resources to remain active in politics. It demonstrates that parties can be remarkably enduring institutions; surviving and reviving parties represent instances of institutional stability. Where they endure, those parties can sustain competition and strengthen the democratic regime.