Want quality focus groups?
No fudging allowed!
Cutting corners on respondent recruitment or facility selection will practically
guarantee low-quality results. When it comes to constructing the criteria
upon which to base your focus group, you can’t afford to fudge on these
two most important variables.
SRA has encountered too many situations in which field services have tried
to make a respondent fit when they had no business in the group. It’s
kind of like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. It just doesn’t
work.
To find a good fit, questionnaires (screeners) must be followed—absolutely!
This means questioning respondents on key areas both during confirmation calls
the day before the group and again at the facility immediately prior to the
group.
If a respondent seems too good to be true, that may be exactly the case. Seasoned
SRA moderators have ways of spotting “cheaters” or “repeaters.”
These are people who participate in focus groups solely for the income they
derive, and they’ll base their answers on staying in “business.”
Selecting a facility based on its convenience to respondents may sound like
a no-brainer, but this is often an area where people think they may have some
“wiggle room.” Facilities should be located near major highways,
offer ample parking and provide separate entrances to ensure confidentiality.
Also, facilities should periodically check their maps and directions to reflect
changes in roads and signage.
“Creature comforts,” such as online access, working copiers, fax
machines, and computers, private areas to make phone calls, and separate thermostats
in the moderation and viewing room are all essential factors to getting quality
results.
At SRA, we’ve learned that cutting corners on recruitment or facility
selection can often mean skewed results and higher costs over the long haul.
You can always be sure that you’ll get out of a project what you put
into it. ‡
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