Unable to get text from ViewGroup

I am trying to get the (non-empty) text of a ViewGroup on Android (android.view.ViewGroup) but it appears to be blank. I tried to use viewGroup.getText() and viewGroup.getAttribute('text'), but both seem to give me empty strings. I am quite certain I am extracting text from the correct WebElement.

I tried to extract the text from another separate android.widget.TextView object, and the text was correct.

Is the empty string problem due to me extracting text from a ViewGroup? Is it the case that I can only extract text from a TextView or an EditText? If so, is there a way to extract text from a ViewGroup?