2.2. The focus group process
Ethical approval was obtained from the University of Warwick and all the farmers gave signed written consent after they had read an information sheet with details on the study objectives, data collection methods, audio recording and data confidentiality. The focus groups were conducted within a maximum 40 min drive of the participants’ farms. All the focus group discussions were guided by the same moderator (LEG) and observer (JK). The moderator facilitated the group discussions and the observer made notes of the discussion, seating plan of farmers, dealt with late-comers and arranged refreshments.
A discussion guide was developed by the authors and used by the moderator to facilitate discussion. The discussion guide was structured around two main areas of interest: (i) farmer use of veterinarians and how they perceive the veterinarian's role in improving health and productivity and (ii) current sources of information from which farmers updated their knowledge including the veterinarian's role in updating their knowledge. The moderator used prompts and questions to generate and facilitate discussion. To ensure robustness of the data various strategies were employed (Krefting, 1991 and Krueger and Casey, 2009), these included expansion and rephrasing of questions and a summary of the discussion provided by the moderator to which farmers were invited to agree or expand. At the end of the discussion the moderator summarised the key discussion points and then farmers were given the opportunity to make any further comments if they felt an area had not been fully explored. Each focus group discussion lasted approximately 90 min.