Pros And Cons Of Focus Groups

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Results
Focus Group
All participants in our three focus groups were students from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, ranging from sophomores to juniors, and varying in different majors. The participants all lived in university residence halls or private certified houses during their first year attending the university. After the first year of college, the participants in our control group lived in the same fraternity house, and the participants in the two other focus groups lived in apartments.
When we asked about roommate choice, all except one participants had at least one roommate. Also, the participants claimed they got along with their roommates. However, their explanations were quite different. While some people gave all …show more content…

Participants who lived in apartments mentioned convenient location, complete amenities, relationships with roommates, and fair rent. To be more specific, the participants who were satisfied with the locations of their apartments stated that their apartments were close to the County Market or restaurants, and also close to their academic buildings. Those who mentioned utility were satisfied with the stove in the kitchen, and the internet speed. One participant claimed the rent was fair based on the quality of his apartment. The control group had a distinct perspective compared with the other two focus groups. All of the participants in the control group claimed that they wanted to live with their good friends and get to know others better. Additionally, the location of the fraternity was convenient for them to go to class. Apparently, participants living in the fraternity house put more weight on the roommate factor, or, to be more precise, they gave more weight to the social factor than other participants living in …show more content…

Using Stata we were able to examine both the importance of rent, and how involved parents are in a student’s financial responsibilities. Of the students surveyed, 92.48% considered rent to be at least somewhat important in their decision making process. To answer our hypothesis, we also examined parent’s financial involvement. As a result, it is evident that parents of the participants were very active in helping pay some costs during a student’s education. More than 50% of the students answered their parents covered all of their living expenses. In contrast, only less than 5% answered that their parents did not help them pay for any of their expenses. These findings contradict our hypothesis and suggest that even though some individuals do not pay for their housing, they still feel obligated to try and find a place with a reasonable price.
Although the relationship between international students and their consideration of safety was confirms from the focus group results, we still utilize the survey to test the hypothesis again. According to the survey results, 59% of international students rated safety as a very important factor while only 6% rated safety as an unimportant factor when choosing a housing option. The finding confirmed our hypothesis that international students are very concerned