On Sunday, I attended the workshop "Conducting Successful Focus Groups," led by Jennifer Sweeney from Drexel University/Sweeney & Associates Consulting. Having recently gone through the process of setting up and assisting with focus groups for our TLA50 community assessment, I was interested in learning more about how focus groups work. Luckily, our TLA50 consultant, Yolanda Cuesta, had already given Casey and me a good education about focus groups, and most of what Dr. Sweeney said went right along with Yolanda's ideas.
The main points are:
1. Keep it small - no more than 12 people per group
2. Pre-screen to avoid having anyone come in with their own agenda
3. Have an assistant to take notes and greet latecomers
4. Keep the focus solely on brainstorming and gathering information (this is not the place to pitch an idea or try to get consensus)
5. Stick to open-ended questions to encourage creative answers.
We also learned some techniques on how to re-direct questions to keep one person from dominating the conversation.
Transcribing the conversation and analyzing the data is the hardest and most time-consuming part of the process, and we learned some useful shortcuts to use in this process, such as grouping by theme.
Finally, we learned about reporting back to stakeholders after a focus group or series of focus groups. The higher the stakes, the more formal the reporting should be.
I enjoyed this workshop. Between this and my experience with our TLA50 focus groups, I feel ready to jump in and start doing this type of assessment technique for our future projects.
This is interesting. I need to talk with you about overall impressions of Jennifer. She teaches a class in grant evaluation which I am thinking about adding to our SIF lineup. Let me know what you think of her next time you see me.
ReplyDeleteOh, and glad to have someone who feels comfortable with conducting focus groups on staff.