The focus group is a qualitative research method designed to elicit group dynamics, shared meanings and social norms - outputs that individual interviews cannot generate. Its transcription is among the most technically demanding in social research: simultaneous speech, laughter, silence, facilitated topic shifts and spontaneous tangents all carry analytical significance.
Diarisation for group dynamics analysis
Listen automatically identifies each participant's voice. The researcher can subsequently analyse who speaks to whom, who initiates topic shifts, whose contributions generate the most response, and who stays silent. These interactional patterns are as analytically rich as the semantic content. For individual interviews that complement group data, see our article on qualitative research interviews.
Building a corpus for systematic analysis
The full transcript from a Listen-processed focus group constitutes a clean textual corpus ready for thematic analysis, content analysis or conversation analysis. The quality of the transcript significantly reduces corpus preparation time - one of the most labour-intensive stages of qualitative research.
Ask each participant to introduce themselves by first name at the start. Listen uses these vocal signatures to substantially improve speaker attribution accuracy across a complex group discussion.
View our plans for research teams.