When Barbie and her team held interviews with a focus group of schoolboys, not only did they find out that these boys used their mobile phones extensively, but that they felt more confident flirting using text messaging than talking face-to-face. What this might suggest is that there is a link between new technology and changes in social behaviour. Of course, this is anecdotal ‘evidence’ at this stage, there is much more research that could be done to find out the extent to which boys are better at text-flirting than face-to-face-flirting and, indeed, whether it has as much effect!

Of course, whilst a single focus group may raise interesting issues, it would be foolish to come to any conclusions without wider research. Companies such as NOP (National Opinion Polls), which is well-known for producing large scale research, would often work with a number of focus groups with, for example, boys and girls from a range of ages and social backgrounds. This would often be backed up by other methods, such as individual survey questionnaires carried out in people’s homes or even a national ‘clip-board’ survey conducted on the street. By sampling a large number of people and using a variety of research methods the degree of certainty in the results produced can be greatly increased.

Alex took a different approach ...