Q. How do you get people for a Focus Group?

A. Everyone agrees that the participants are the key to a good group experience. But how do we get articulate people with an interest in sharing their views to come to the sessions?

• The easy part — they are called by professional recruiters who use a questionnaire I design to determine if respondents meet the group qualifications.

• The hard part — deciding whether or not they are “group material”.

We do not want to recruit anyone who has trouble understanding or coping with the questions they are asked in the screening interview. These are typically far less complicated questions than they will be asked in the actual Focus Group setting.

I often include an “articulation question” in the screening questionnaire. This is a simple, open-ended question. The content of the respondent’s answer is not critical. What we want to gauge is how much, how well and how passionately they reply. Those who respond best to these questions also typically respond well in the group situation.

Finally, I encourage the recruiters I work with to use their best instincts and experience here. They have recruited for many years and can often tell if someone will be combative or difficult to communicate with just by their responses to the screener. I ask them not to recruit anyone they have the slightest concern about.

And there is one last chance to weed out poor participants. Once the respondents arrive, I try to spend some time either talking with them or watching them interact as they wait. Sometimes one recruit will be silent and withdrawn in the corner, while all the rest exchange small talk. Sometimes one recruit will walk into the waiting area and do all the talking in a loud voice, preventing any kind of exchange. If it seems that this or other behavior could endanger the process, they will not be seated in the Focus Group.

Next time — Why do we have to pay people to come to Focus Groups?

Do you have a comment or research-related question? Send it to me for future FAQs!

Q. I keep hearing about On-Line Focus Groups. What do you think about them?

A. I think certain types of qualitative information can be gathered on line, but On-Line Focus Groups seem like a misnomer to me — as do Telephone Focus Groups, which have also had some popularity.

One of the major reasons to do Focus Group Discussions is so that the researchers and clients can observe the reactions and behaviors of their customers immediately and with minimal self-editing. You not only hear but see their reactions to new products. You not only hear but see how long it takes them to understand a concept. You not only hear their responses, but you see their body language and facial expressions.

These advantages are completely lost in On-Line Focus Groups, which are basically chat rooms set up for a particular time and on a particular subject, with qualified respondents invited to participate.

That said, I do think that some of the by-appointment “chat” set-ups on line can be used to gather useful information. They can be particularly useful in situations where respondents cannot be gathered in one place (and one-on-one personal interviews are not feasible). This type of methodology is most useful when the desired result is more factual/rational than emotional, since there will be no body language, inflection, unedited noises, nodding, head-shaking, etc. to analyze.

Do you have a comment or a research-related question? Forward it to me for future FAQs!

Q. How will the research business be affected by the new Do Not Call legislation? Is telephone interviewing covered by it?

A. A. The good news is that legitimate marketing research is NOT covered by the Do Not Call list legislation.

The bad news is that many of the people answering the telephone will think it is, will be annoyed by receiving the call and may be less likely to answer the questions. This can limit our sample possibilities (which have already been limited by answering machines and caller identification technology).

Most researchers (and I am one of them) still consider the telephone interview the best way to achieve a random sample of the population despite all of these limitations.

So, how will we deal with this? The company I work with most for telephone interviewing tells individuals who answer and say they are on the Do Not Call list that legitimate research surveys, such as the one they are doing tonight on (subject), are not covered by the list. However, if the respondent would prefer, the caller will offer to put him/her on an internal Do Not Call list so their company will not call them again.

This honest and helpful approach has been very effective. The individuals respond positively to this very simple and polite explanation and offer. If the subject of the survey is of any interest to the respondent (and they are not in the middle of something), they are likely to go ahead and complete it. Relatively few ask to be on the company’s Do Not Call list.

Further proof that, when working with people “It’s not what you do, it’s how you do it.”

Do you have a comment or research-related question? Send it to me for future FAQs!

Q. There aren’t many people in the group of customers I want to talk to — only a few dozen. I would like to get the kind of information you get with Focus Groups from them, but they are scattered around the country. What would you suggest?

A. A. I have had several clients with similar situations. They want to talk to upper management level executives in a few selected companies or industries, or they want to talk to physicians who have a very narrow specialty, for example.

We have used two approaches successfully:

In-person or telephone one-on-one interviews — These are by-appointment interviews with a highly experienced interviewer (I do these myself for my clients) who has had intensive backgrounding in the subject being explored. A letter, fax or e-mail request would usually be Step 1, followed by a call with the potential respondent’s scheduler (assistant, secretary, office manager, etc.).

Focus Groups at National or International Conferences — Your customers may attend national or international conferences. These conferences can be an ideal place for Focus Groups. The potential respondents are there, they are not in their offices and they feel freer to come to and participate in the groups. They also tend to enjoy being with other participants who share their problems, interests, concerns, etc. (we carefully avoid having direct competitors in these sessions). This type of Focus Groups requires extensive pre-planning and the arrangements are usually made several months in advance.

Do you have a comment or research-related question? Send it to me for future FAQs!

Q. Why don’t I just moderate my own groups, or have someone on my staff do it?

A. Since I am admittedly a bit prejudiced on this issue, here is a list from
The Burke Institute’s Moderator Training materials:

Advantages to Moderating Your Own Groups

• Potentially superior product category knowledge
• Superior knowledge of specific product under consideration
• Superior knowledge of project objectives and internal development opportunities that can be helpful in probing
• Lower out-of-pocket costs

Disadvantages to Moderating Your Own Groups

• Loss of objectivity of outside consultant — loss of objectivity apparent in study design, actual moderating and reporting
• Sacrifice higher degree of skill possessed by qualitative experts
• Sacrifice superior knowledge of category that a consultant might have
• Extreme time consumption of in-house person

And one more from Jackie:

The in-house person who moderates is often “held responsible” for what happens in the groups. If the product/ad/concept tanks in the Focus Groups, this may be seen as the in-house moderator’s “fault” — and an in-house moderator has to continue to work there every day!

Do you have a comment or research-related question? Send it to me for future FAQs!

Q. I’ve been told I need a female moderator if we’re doing a Focus Group of only women, a male for men, an African-American for African-Americans and so forth. What do you think about that?

A. I think there is something to it in a few instances (intimate products, for example), but that the real key is to use an experienced moderator who is comfortable with the audience and the subject under discussion.

For many years, the rule was to choose a moderator who “looked like the group” on the assumption that the participants would feel comfortable with someone they “recognized” and thus would be more forthcoming with information.

This sounds good and works up to a point — but in this scenario, group participants may assume that the moderator, who is “like them,” already knows what they know and feels the way they feel. If this isn’t controlled by an experienced moderator, the result can be shallow or spotty information from your group.

On the other hand, when the moderator is clearly NOT like the participants, they often feel that they must explain more completely, dig deeper, be more verbal in order to make the moderator understand “what it is like” for them. A skilled moderator can help them come to realize that it is okay and in fact necessary for them to explain their feelings.

Some of the most in-depth and interesting discussions I have conducted have been with male construction workers, all African-American groups, teen-agers and gay males. They felt that they needed to and could make me understand how they related to a product or service, and how that was different from the way others (including me) would.

Do you have a comment or research-related question? Send it to me for future FAQs!

Q. We have decided we need some research and I have been told to “get some proposals” for the project. How do I prepare for this? What do I need to tell the research companies I talk to?

A. Different companies may have different ways of going about this, but all of them (or at least the good ones!) will ask you a series of questions about what you need. Here are some basic questions I would probably ask:

• What is the situation? Why do you think you need research and why now? What will the research be used for?

• What are the questions you need to have answered? (This is not the survey questions — those come much later — these are the management/ product development/crisis situation questions you need to have the answers to.)

• Who can answer these questions? (Give all the detail you can about the target audience — this is key to developing the price estimate for the proposal)

• How many of these people are out there? (This is also called the incidence — the % of the population that is qualified as your target audience)

• Have you researched this question or this audience before? Were there any concerns or problems I should know about? (If my company is selected for a project and there is previous research, I will ask to see it…until then, it is useful to know if there have been previous discoveries that can be used or mishaps that can be avoided.)

• Do you have any unusual circumstances for this project? (Deadlines and money are always tight — are they tighter in this project for any reason?)

If you are seeking competitive proposals, you may want to write up the answers to these questions as a Request for Proposal (RFP) and send them along with your contact information to all of the companies you intend to solicit for bids.

Next Time — Evaluating Research Proposals

Do you have a comment or research-related question? Send it to me for future FAQs!

Q. I sent out requests for proposals for the research project we want to do. Now I have several proposals and they all seem entirely different to me. How do I pick one?

A. This may sound like heresy coming from a researcher, but I would not worry too much about the various types of methodology and sample sizes proposed if they seem reasonable and if the company explains why they will work. With research, there is seldom only one correct approach.

I would be more concerned about four other things that tend to predict the overall success of the project:

• Did the company representative listen to you? Is this a proposal that reflects your needs, as discussed with them? Or is it a proposal for what the company usually does and/or is known for? (It could be both, but be sure you are comfortable that this won’t be just one more “connect-the-dots” project for them).
• Is the proposal clear and easy to understand? Does it explain the process in a way that is clear to you, but not condescending? Remember, this company will be writing the final report that you will have to be able to understand and work with.
• Does the proposal cover all the bases? Does it tell you what you need to know about what will be done, who will do it and how long it will take?
• Does the price seem reasonable to you? If one of your proposals is exceedingly high-priced, be sure you know why (most of the actual cost of primary research is in data-collection –number, length and type of interview). The same thing is true if one of the proposals seems much too cheap. If you don’t understand the price, ask for an explanation or a price breakdown.

This is also the time to talk to some of the previous clients of the companies to which you have narrowed your field. Ask them if the company performed on time and on budget. Find out if they do what they say. Find out if their former clients would use them again for the same project — and if not, why not.

Do you have a comment or research-related question? Send it to me for future FAQs!

Q. One of our new products is designed to appeal to kids in high school. Can we do Focus Groups with them, just like we do for our adult products?

A. You can do Focus Groups with teen-agers — but doing the groups the same way you do for adults may lead to some unpleasant surprises!

There are several areas in which groups with teens and tweens (middle and high school kids) should differ from those with adults. If you have kids this age of your own (or a good memory), these will make sense:

1) Mixing genders is seldom a good idea with these age groups. When you mix genders at this stage, there is so much “positioning” going on between the males and the females that the Focus Group subject can be lost in a sea of hormones.

2) Take care with age groupings. “High school kids” may sound like a good demographic break, but freshmen and seniors do not talk to each other — and none of them talk very much when they are put in the same room. The freshmen are too nervous and the seniors are too “cool” — both attitudes that are bad news for group dynamics. To avoid this, I usually group by grade in school. It is best if each group represents one grade, but I have had success mixing 11th and 12th graders OR 9th and 10th graders.

3) Keep it short. Ninety minutes is the maximum length for sessions with these age groups — and I shoot for shorter.

4) Keep it interactive and change it up. To keep their attention and get the best from these groups, it is better to have them responding to stimuli than discussing a subject/product/idea in the abstract. Products to look at, taste and try are very popular. Exercises such as collage-building or reacting to benefit statements or pictures are often effective.

Finally, the key to doing Focus Groups with teens and tweens is treating them with respect. Moderators and others who interact with teen/tween respondents should not try to emulate their speech or their behaviors. They are smart, savvy consumers (why else would you be interested in their business?). They also have excellent antennae for the first signs of condescension. A moderator who tries to be “one of the gang” is not going to have much success with teens and tweens.

Do you have a comment or research-related question? Send it to me for future FAQs!

Q. We need to know more about how people in our target audience feel about a very sensitive issue. We would love to hear it discussed in a Focus Group setting, but don’t know if people will be comfortable enough to talk or secure enough to be honest. What do you think?

A. I get this type of request more and more frequently. Organizations want to understand feelings about sensitive issues ranging from racial attitudes to cosmetic surgery to money issues to the death penalty — and everything in between.

There are ways to do Focus Groups which will surface deep feelings about these difficult-to-discuss subjects. Here are a few ideas that have worked for me:

1. The groups should not be too large. On sensitive subjects, I like to work with 5-6 people rather than the more usual 8-12. People share more easily with fewer people in the room. And it is much more difficult for respondents to choose not to participate in a smaller group.

2. The groups should have something pretty obvious in common — all women, all older, all have had a certain type of surgery, all students, etc. This allows them to become comfortable with one another more quickly.

3. The session should be structured so that the participants are responding to stimuli rather than just being asked to state an opinion about a sensitive subject outright. Projective techniques like collage-building are often used. Or, respondents are asked for their reactions to statements that “someone else made” about the subject. They are reacting to stimuli which will evoke their true feelings, not being forced to make a personal and/or emotional confession.

4. Let them write it. At the end of the session, respondents are asked to write down anything that they think the organization should know or do which wasn’t mentioned in the session. This is completely anonymous, left in the center of the table after the session.

Do you have a comment or research-related question? Send it to me for future FAQs!