Background:
Despite growing support for mixed methods approaches we still have little systematicknowledge about the consequences of combining surveys and focus groups. While themethodological aspects of questionnaire surveys have been researched extensively, thecharacteristics of focus group methodology are understudied. We suggest and discusswhether the focus group setting, as compared to questionnaire surveys, encouragesparticipants to exaggerate views in a negative direction.DiscussionBased on an example from our own research, where we conducted a survey as a follow up ofa focus group study, and with reference to theoretical approaches and empirical evidencefrom the literature concerning survey respondent behaviour and small group dynamics, wediscuss the possibility that a discrepancy in findings between the focus groups and thequestionnaire reflects characteristics of the two different research methods. In contrast to thesurvey, the focus group study indicated that doctors were generally negative to clinicalguidelines. We were not convinced that this difference in results was due to methodologicalflaws in either of the studies, and discuss instead how this difference may have been theresult of a general methodological phenomenon.SummaryBased on studies of how survey questionnaires influence responses, it appears reasonable toclaim that surveys are more likely to find exaggerated positive views. Conversely, there aresome indications in the literature that focus groups may result in complaints and overlynegative attitudes, but this is still an open question. We suggest that while problematic issuestend to be under-communicated in questionnaire surveys, they may be overstated in focusgroups.We argue for the importance of increasing our understanding of focus group methodology,for example by reporting interesting discrepancies in mixed methods studies. In addition,more experimental research on focus groups should be conducted to advance themethodology and to test our hypothesis.