In this study, six focus groups comprising technical communicators and technical communication instructors evaluated and discussed two versions of an instructional manual and two versions of a memo. Findings reveal that the practitioners and academics relied on similar metaphors (including the Conduit Metaphor), metonymies, and constructed scenarios. Although their ways of evaluating texts were broadly similar, practitioners exhibited greater awareness of task-related rhetorical variables whereas academics were more likely to be concerned with textual features and general principles that apply to technical writing tasks. Differences between the groups were particularly evident in discussions of the memo.

In this article, we recommend a research methodology, focus groups, that we have found useful in supplementing other, more commonly used measures of qualitative and quantitative assessment. We explain why focus groups are particularly well suited for assessment, how we have used them in our research to examine teacher and practitioner perspectives of effective technical writing, and how others might use them for evaluating texts, programs, or courses.

Writing/Disciplinarity: A Sociohistoric Account of Literate Activity in the Academy. Paul A. Prior. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1998. 333 pages. Exploring the Rhetoric of International Professional Communication: An Agenda for Teachers and Researchers. Ed. Carl R. Lovitt with Dixie Goswami. Amityville, NY: Baywood Publishing Company, Inc., 1999. 326 pages.