This work aims to describe the elderly people’s opinions when they are presented scenarios developed into the HERMES project. Two focus groups were held in Austria and Spain in order to collect their impressions about the way in which the technology can cover their needs. Though some of them are reluctant to use the technology, they welcomed some functionalities of the HERMES system and they co...

Sustainable communities are promoted as a desirable policy goal and, in particular, local authorities are encouraged to contribute to climate change mitigation through urban planning. Furthermore, recent research takes a broad perspective on the environmental sustainability of urban areas and considers the environmental impact of all consumption. A focus group study was conducted in Finland for...

The paper describes a study conducted in Rwanda involving 12 participants selected from a larger cohort of 24 final-year university students who were part of a group based training programme. The programme was about how to search, retrieve and use webbased literature. Empirical data were collected through interviews and focus group discussions. The purpose was to explore ways of using Informati...

Despite the fact that governments continue to push the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in public service provision, their adoption rate has not always been as high as expected. In this research, we focus on indicators that could lead to the adoption of video-to-video communication in education. With this aim we organized three focus groups with teachers from Ireland and Gr...

How do women experience the climate of engineering undergraduate education? How is this shaped by race/ethnicity? Using a focus group methodology, we interviewed women who self-identify as Asian, Latina and White at a large public institution in the southeastern United States. Their narratives are analyzed using the interdisciplinary theoretical framework of “microaggressions” from the social s...

Online participation in collaborative online learning environments is instrumental in motivating students to learn and promoting their learning satisfaction, but there has been little research on the technical supports for motivating students’ online participation. The purpose of this study was to develop a visualization tool to motivate learners to participate actively in collaborative online ...

Competitive Intelligence is a process which involves retrieving, analyzing and packaging information to offer a final product that responds to the intelligence needs of a particular decision maker or community of decision makers. Competitive Intelligence Professionals transform raw data and information into intelligence by collecting and organizing information resources. Mining companies have a...

To clarify concerns that the public has with genetic technologies, the article presents the results of focus group interviews conducted in Denmark in 2000. The concerns of the public are divided into three ideal-typical categories: social (dealing with environmental and health risks), economic (dealing with both the threats and opportunities of the new technologies), and cultural (taking up eth...

Abstract—This paper presents the results of the DigCurV review of training needs in the field of digital preservation and curation. The project carried out three research activities during 2011 and in early 2012: an online survey, a series of focus groups, and an analysis of job advertisements. The results indicate a severe lack of qualified staff as well as a lack of appropriate training optio...

In this paper we present results from an EUfunded project with the aim of examining the adaptation of e-learning to meet the needs of managers in different contexts. A set of design considerations is elucidated. These principles were derived from an analysis of five completed projects. This was followed by focus group discussion in the UK to test the principles derived.. These focus group were ...