Find The Right Focus Group Respondents: Screening Confirmation

As any experienced marketing researcher knows, the key to focus group success is gathering the right respondents. Earlier this week, we talked about the importance of finding and filtering respondents with a well-crafted recruitment screener.

But the screening process shouldn’t stop there. Once you’ve identified the best group of respondents based on your initial online survey or phone screening and scheduled them for your focus group event, follow up with a confirmation call. Over the course of this call, ask some questions to help you verify your respondents’ initial responses, ensuring that they are still accurate and in line with your requirements.

Switch up your original screener. Try asking each question a little differently … If it was originally a “yes or no” question, reformulate it to invite a more open-ended response. Now that the initial screening round is complete, don’t hesitate to probe a little deeper and try to draw out your respondents’ views, values and opinions in more detail with your follow-up screening.

Try to find any holes in the respondent’s story. Identifying any discrepancies or areas of requirement weakness at this follow-up stage helps you avoid discovering unqualified or under-qualified respondents once your focus group is in session. What’s more, if you need to go back and recruit additional respondents, the sooner the better!  

For more helpful follow-up screening and requirement confirmation guidance, stay tuned to the FPG blog or click on the button below to schedule a consultation with one of the experts at Focus Pointe Global.

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