A sample of participants from all five departments at the steelmanufacturing
company was used to achieve maximum variation
(Patton, 1990). We aimed to get ten focus groups, with about six
to eight employees in each group. To help the participants feel
comfortable in discussing safety at their own workplace, it was
considered important that the participants in each focus group
be colleagues from the same department and the same shift team,
to share the same frame of reference. Two shift teams per department
were randomly selected from staffing-lists, and then employees
from these shift teams were randomly selected and invited to
the focus group interviews. The department managers and their
deputy managers helped to facilitate the recruitment of participants
to be interviewed, by informing the selected employees
about the study. Written information describing the study was
given to potential participants by their deputy managers, and they
could agree or decline to participate. If they declined to participate,
the next employee on the staffing-list was approached by the deputy
manager. The invited employees mainly chose to participate in
the focus groups. They were informed about the day and time
when the interview was going to take place. The deputy managers
then informed the research group when sufficient employees had
accepted to participate in each interview. A total of 66 employees
participated in ten groups (Table 1). Characteristics of the participants
are described in Table 2.