Find The Right Focus Group Respondents: On-Site Screening

If you’ve been following the Focus Pointe Global blog this week, then you know the importance of formulating a strong initial screener and following it up with a confirmation screening call.

The final and most critical step in the recruitment stage of your focus group project is on-site screening. By the time your focus group respondents arrive at your research facility, chances are you’ve interacted with them online, over the phone and maybe even via email. Hopefully, those initial stages were enough to help you gather more than enough highly qualified individuals who meet your project requirements. Of course, in some cases, phone and online interactions may not always be the best indication of respondent strength.

As any good focus group moderator will tell you, having disinterested, inarticulate or unresponsive individuals in the room can derail an entire focus group project session and impact the results gathered from all participants. On the other end of the spectrum, you want to avoid having one or more “professional respondents” in your group. These are individuals who strive to make a full time job out of focus group participation. While not as directly disruptive as the first group above, the results generated by professional respondents are usually based on canned or pre-planned answers and are therefore less likely to produce the kind of honest, valuable feedback and insight you’re looking for.

With that in mind, it’s a good idea to conduct one final round of screening on the day of your focus group session, keeping an eye out for the kinds of respondents discussed above. If you’ve done a good job of over-recruiting for your project then eliminating these undesirable elements from your group shouldn’t have a negative impact on your sample size.

To learn more about screening and recruitment best practices, click on the button below to schedule a consultation with one of the experts at Focus Pointe Global.

Check back in at the FPG blog next week when we’ll be taking an in-depth look at social media and focus group confidentiality. If you’d like this and all future Focus Pointe Global blog posts sent directly to you, simply enter your email address in the field to the right to subscribe.