Focus Group

There is a lot of nonsense out there about focus groups. They've come to be so misdescribed that they have come to mean a bunch of people in a room talking about something. Actually, a focus group is a group interviewing technique consisting of between 6 and 12 people (more or less depending) who are carefully screened according to specific criteria and who are led through a carefully designed list of questions by a trained moderator.

A focus groups is a qualitative research technique. The best uses are for understanding how people think about things that can be seen or heard or felt. You cannot predict from a focus group to a larger population. That is, you can't say that because 4 of 12 people in a focus group said a certain thing, 33.3% of the population think or believe something.

It's dangerous just to do one focus group. Say you want to know how teens aged 16 to 19 react to a certain kind of food. Doing just one group may be misleading. Two or three groups would give you a much better read.

Focus groups can be very useful and in some cases are best. Good uses are for testing advertisements, reactions to food (as above), acceptance to new products, and so forth. For anything that must be personally experienced.

I suspect as we go down the road web-based tools will be able to do a lot of the things focus groups used to be the best things for.

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Focus Group

We hear a lot about focus groups. During the recent presidential debates, a CNN reporter ran a "focus group" in Columbus, Ohio. Wikipedia describes a focus group as

A form of qualitative research in which a group of people is asked about their attitude towards a product, service, concept, advertisement, idea, or packaging. Questions are asked in an interactive group setting where participants are free to talk with other group members.

This is true as far as it goes.

What the CNN reporter ran was not a "focus group" in a market research sense. A real focus group occurs in a room around a table, consisting of 6-12 participants, led by a trained moderator, focused on a give topic or range of given topics. Usually the sessions are taped and the participants screened and reimbursed. Sometimes they are held in a professional focus group facility with videotaping. However I've lead many successful focus groups in hotel rooms, meeting rooms in libraries, once in SE Minnesota off a small room in a bar and in Big Lake, Texas, in a bank conference center.

What CNN had was, as George W. Bush would say, "a bunch of folks." It was basically a series of two-way dialogues with the reporter asking the questions and the audience answering them. I'm not saying what she did was without value. It was very interesting, just not a focus group. A successful focus groups features a lot of give and take among participants. The moderator simply guides the discussion and backs off and listens to what people say and what they don't say.

If you're interested in focus groups, read the Wikipedia article and follow its links and references. And post a comment. I'm interested in what you have to say.

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