A new paper has been published in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications which provides an overview on the use of focus group method in cultural ecosystem services research. The authors provide suggestions for more robust and trustworthy applications of the focus group method, which can advance both research in this field and the implementation of the ecosystem services concept in the future.
Focus groups are an increasingly popular method for eliciting non-material values and cultural ecosystem services in the context of studying human–nature relationships. The authors aimed at exploring where and how focus groups were used in the research into cultural ecosystem services. Furthermore, they aimed to highlight good practices and potential caveats of the use of this method with respect to recommendations in methodological literature.
The results show that focus groups were mostly used to research Recreation, Aesthetics, and Education categories. The review also discovered insufficient reporting and methodological inconsistencies in some of the studies. The research community can benefit from summarizing the most frequent applications as well as a synthesis of benefits and drawbacks learnt from the past use of the focus group method.
Source: Slovák, Ľ., Daněk, J. & Daněk, T. The use of focus groups in cultural ecosystem services research: a systematic review. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 10, 45 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-023-01530-3
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