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    Focus Groups

In the world of business, the Focus Group has become the standard qualitative research tool. Recruit individuals, gather them together in a room, ask them a bunch of related questions, record what they say, pay them as they exit, transcribe the session, pour over the transcripts in an attempt to find something of value, write up a report, start all over again. There you have it. Simple. With focus group centers in all the major cities that will gladly help, why not! They are relatively inexpensive, and they certainly don't seem all that hard to do.

The great thing about focus groups:  They are easy to implement (relatively speaking), the data gathering, analysis, and reporting is fast, many times the video produces great moments that can be used to highlight points of interest for marketing or internal training, thus increasing the value of the groups, and everyone gets to feel that important information has been uncovered and truth revealed.

The downside to focus groups:  They can be terribly misleading, can lead to action on the part of decision makers for all the wrong reasons, depend on quasi-professional respondents who may have a vested interest more in maintaining their availability as a respondent than in the topic at hand, and can be moderated by an individual who does not have the depth of knowledge necessary to ask the right questions.  

Having said all this, I am a fan of focus groups. Certainly they must be correctly implemented (who gets recruited is key), moderated, and have balanced and thoughtful reporting. If expertly carried out, then I feel that focus groups provide value in decision making and should emphatically be one of the primary qualitative research options available.

Discussion

Qualitative Research in general is about talking to people, not necessarily face-to-face, but certainly in a manner that is more a discussion than not. Closed-ended questioning, more typical of quantitative questionnaires, is generally not used for this type of research. The goal of qualitative research is to obtain in-depth contextual information about a specific topic, rather than to obtain some statistical trend within a given population.

Focus group methodology is one tool that market researchers use to get at this in-depth contextual information. Perhaps the best way to think about focus groups is that they are a socially accepted tool within our society to generate discussion among selected individuals about a topic in such a manner that the discussion itself uncovers more informational complexity than individual one-on-one interviews or surveys ever could. One could in fact say that the focus group has become a part of our pop culture, something that most people know exists and in which most would want to participate, at least once.

What do you mean by contextual information?

An old illustration. With quantitative research you can determine who buys what dog food, how often, where, and how much they spend on the various subcategories, and so on. What you cannot know, however, is why one dog food brand is preferred over another? What was the decision making criteria for the purchase? What did a child say to the parent when at the pet store that encouraged switching brands?

By talking to a group of dog food consumers, you might find that the brand switching decision had more to do with the design of the label than nutrition for the dog, or perhaps the dog owner's child wanted to keep up with or impress their neighbors. There is always something more going on with decision making than can possibly be covered in a survey. Some aspect of daily life inevitably pops up in a focus group that a product manager may never have thought about. These insights are why qualitative market researchers go to such great lengths to talk to individuals and groups.

But aren't they rather artificial, these focus groups?

Yes, talking to folks during a focus group setting is admittedly artificial, contrived, on purpose...however you want to describe it. Staying with the example above, it is true that people don't really spend their day contemplating the merits of dog food labels. (Well, maybe marketing managers do!) The entire focus group setting is contrived, but even still it is a useful tool in generating a broad spectrum of information about a topic, product, event or idea that can either stand on its own and be very useful, or that is destined to be tested in a large, quantitative survey.

Indeed, one problem is that many businesses only see the focus group, or qualitative research in general, as a precursor to the development of a quantitative survey and not as a means to find the nuances that can often make or break a business decision. Those who espouse the use of qualitative research despair at this limited use of the focus group technique.

What are the issues?

There are several issues to consider when thinking about focus groups, including:

• the topic may be too complex for a (traditional) two hour group
• those recruited may not be up to the task, ether in terms of knowledge or participation
• the moderator may not be skilled or knowledgeable enough, or may be biased because of past research on the same topic
• the client either refuses or is unable to provide an incentive that will attract the best respondents,
• the focus group environment itself may interfere (room temperature, food, cleanliness, and so on)
• the time of the focus group, day vs. night vs. late night all have an effect
• the moderator's guide is too proscriptive, not allowing enough time for probes or diversions that could lead to insight

The list goes on. Perhaps the most important thing to keep in mind is that you need the right participants, which means that the recruiting must be excellent. And, especially for those executive level groups, you need a very good moderator, one who is able to relate to those sitting around the table.

How do I know I have a good moderator?

A good moderator does not have to be an expert in the subject matter. Clearly, the more complex the topic the more likely you will need someone with at least some background, and for those very technical topics, you might need a specialist in that field, but the moderator should not have to know the topic to the level of his or her client. In fact, you want a moderator to be a specialist at research, and the ability to listen, to know when to follow a respondent down an unexpected line of thinking.

A good moderator will:

• study the topic at hand in depth,
• ask a large number of questions, questions that challenge the client, questions that might come from the participants.
• prepare a moderator's guide well in advance of the groups so that it can be extensively reviewed.
• be able to make the group work, draw out the participants, create an atmosphere that is creative and certainly not boring.
• understand what questionnaires or projective techniques may be called for
• know what focus groups information eliciting techniques to use and when
• provide a thorough debriefing with the client
• write a report that is consultative, and not simply a parroting of what was said in the group

This last point is especially important. A so-called Top Line report is often all that is provided, and that is fine if those in the back room are themselves expert at analysis and interpretation. They can take the video and go do their own, more detailed reporting. Most of the time, however, the moderator is the person who is the expert at understanding, over a series of groups, what is the balanced perspective. The moderator should be able to write a report that informs broadly, that is consultative within the topic, and that can state what may be politically incorrect, should the report come from a member of the company funding the research.

How do I know I have good recruiting?

Most of the time you won't know if you have good recruiting until after the groups are finished. If you have an experienced, good moderator, then they will know where to get good recruiting within a city or region. Usually. There are times when a geographic region has simply been saturated for a particular topic, and the recruit is difficult. At other times there may be a topic that is so complex and arcane that the pool of potential recruits is limited, and you end up getting what you get, and hope it works.

Most recruiting facilities have a list of respondents that they work over and over again. They try to keep the respondents fresh, that is, they limit how many times a month or a quarter a respondent can be recruited to a group. There are "professional" respondents out there, some who are good at pretending to know something about almost any topic remotely close to their area of expertise. A good recruiting house will know who these people are and weed them from their list. Others they leave on the list because, even though they are frequently called upon, they are informed enough and thoughtful enough that they add to the group discussion.

In the end, a focus group recruit can only be as good as the recruiting guide. This needs to be thoughtfully executed and managed by both the client, the moderator, and the recruiting house.

What other informational resources are out there?

Almost all of the major market research firms have web sites that discuss the positives of qualitative research, and its various uses. Not many discuss the issues or problems. Try these for further definitions and issues:

• QRCA (Qualitative Research Consultants Association)
• Wikipedia on Qualitative Market Research

There are also a few books that might be of interest:

• Qualitative Market Research (Hy Mariampolski)
• Moderating to the Max (Bystedt, Lynn, and Potts)
• Even more....