Quantitative, qualitative and focus groups. Confused? Me too

Today I have come to realise that my dissertation could well tip me over the edge. I don't want to scare anyone with that statement but todays lecture was scary to say the least.

Since the lectures began, we have learnt about quantitative and qualitative research methods. I didn't even know these existed. As far as I was concerned, research was research. How shallow and naive I am.

Today the lecture was based around the idea of focus groups. Basically what we were told was that if we want to use focus groups as part of our research we need to arrange at least four. There is no limit on the amount of people we can have in the group but everything that is said during the discussion needs to be recorded and transcribed.

We were given an idea of how long the transcriptions could be with four focus group transcriptions amounting to 50 pages of text.

I never really thought about using focus groups but now I definitely think I will pass. I'm just worried what other methods of research they are going to throw at us next week.