Latino National Survey (LNS) Focus Group Data, 2006

The focus groups conducted by the research team for the project presented here offer precisely this convergence of both breadth and depth. The team used a common protocol to guide discussion in fifteen focus groups -- with more than 150 participants in nine cities across eight states -- that were designed to include Spanish and English-speaking respondents, in different regions of the country, with differing compositions by generation and country of origin. The number and range of the participants in these Latino focus groups are unique in the social science literature. This study presents the results of a unique data set, the results of fifteen focus groups conducted across the United States with Latino residents, including foreign-born -- both legal and undocumented immigrants and native-born. These data provide more range than allowed by the typical interview-based project and not only give key insights into Latino residents' thoughts about community, language, discrimination, ties to their countries of origin, and the like, but also provide some sense of participants' explanations of their reasoning and motivations, something not achievable through structured survey data alone.