Qualitative by the Numbers Blog Six: Two Hours to Conduct a Traditional Focus Group
Legend has it that the first focus groups in America had these features:
A. Location: Held in the living room of a recruiter’s home in 1937
B. Client: Proctor and Gamble
C. Topic: Soap Brands
D. Three themes covered: Reason for using current soap brand, awareness of other soaps in the competitive set, and reactions to several tag lines for a specific soap type/brand
E. Moderator: One male moderator from Vienna, Austria who had moved to the US, bringing principles Dr. Sigmund Freud used with his patients and translating those principles into a method for getting below top-of-mind insights from consumers
F. Duration: 2 hours
G. 10 respondents
H. A note-taker
I. Observers seated in chairs behind the respondents so respondents faced only the moderator
Fast forward to the 21st century, a few things have remained the same from the 1930’s:
- One moderator [can be from anywhere and any gender]
- A client who needs insights for strategic planning
- Two hours for a traditional focus group
What’s changed and the reasons for the change include:
A. Focus group facilities are structured to support a research environment with observation rooms for clients, audio taping, and video recording.
B. For in-person focus groups, the “ideal” number of respondents has been dropping since the 1930’s. Back then, 10-12 respondents stood as the “norm” with the expectation that at least the majority would contribute and “OK” to have some who didn’t. By the 1980’s the number dropped to eight with some researchers noticing that this mirrored an “ideal” dinner party of four couples where, at some point, all the men had a sub group and ditto for the women. By the early part of the 21st century, numbers of “ideal” respondents moved closer to six or seven, with researchers noticing that the more people around the table, the less each one has to respond to moderator questions. This factor, coupled with more data desired by clients, inside a two-hour framework, made sense with fewer respondents present.
C. Clients can observe in real time in a specific setting or via internet platforms where the focus group is streamed to their computer.
D. The number of themes to be discussed in a traditional two-hour focus group – it would be lovely to just have three, but, more likely, it is four or five themes because clients want to “pack” the discussion guide with as many questions as possible.
Traditional focus groups still honor the 2-hour rule, typically running from 6-8pm and 8-10pm. However, some shifts have been occurring along this dimension: Clients sometimes request 90-minute groups rather than 120 minutes for a session, but not necessarily wanting six respondents or three themes. They may want eight respondents and 4-5 themes!
Some clients asking for 90-minute sessions want to streamline the process and eliminate “front matter” [What respondents are told at the outset which includes the purpose of the study, research disclosures (e.g., digital recordings, observers, mirrors and Ground rules) and self-introductions.] They want to get “right to the heart of the matter and jump into research questions as quickly as possible.
Other clients do not think it will take more than 90 minutes to cover the landscape of respondent perceptions, opinions, beliefs, and attitudes around a product, service, or ideas, and they believe they can save money by having shorter sessions and lower stipends.
There are several factors around what truly happens in a two-hour focus group that might not be apparent on the surface.
- A 120-minute focus group is not 120 minutes of research time. On a good day, a trained moderator might get 100 minutes of actual research done. The “lost 20 minutes” might be due to some or all of the following factors:
a. Agreement with respondents: Session can start late, but session will end on time.
b. People logistics can siphon off minutes – taking seats, setting up name tags, making sure right respondents are in the room, providing legal disclosures [this session is being taped and observers are present].
Ground rules are provided to keep session as a research event, not a free-for-all discussion; self-introductions occur for the moderator to “calibrate” respondents [who talks fast/slow, who has some humor, who acts terrified, who talks softly, etc.,].
As well, respondents “calibrate” each other – who is the other single mom, who else is working full time, who else is a native to this city, who else enjoys same hobby as me, etc.
c. Activities that go beyond “I ask – you answer” might include sorting materials, filling out a worksheet before providing viewpoints, choosing a picture and using it as proxy to provide deeper insights, reading a concept, handling a prototype, etc.
The instructions for the activity are not research. They are the set up to do the research.
The process of doing the activity [e.g., completing a worksheet, choosing a picture, sorting items, etc.,] is not research – talking about reasons respondents did a task, or what choices they made, or what respondents discovered is research.
d. Respondents start to answer a moderator generated question and in the process of doing so, go off the rails [sometimes called tangents], and have to be pulled back to the question on the table
e. A question posed to respondents isn’t clearly understood so it had to be repeated or reframed.
f. Instructions to respondents are misinterpreted or twisted and moderator has to untangle them and make sure respondents are clear what they are to do.
g. Respondents sometimes get emotional [e.g., express anger, cry tears, become sullen, etc.,] requiring the moderator to stop conducting research and manage the human condition present before returning to the topic at hand.
The above list is just some of the time thieves that can steal minutes in a 120-minute session. As mentioned earlier, a trained moderator can probably salvage a good 100 minutes. Then the “two-thirds rule” comes into play. In a survey study, there is one interviewer and one respondent, and the answers are “pick one of these,” so not a lot of in-depth probing on part of the interviewer is necessary, nor is there a lot of introspective thinking on the part of the respondent.
In a focus group of 6-8 respondents, “best practices of qualitative interviewing” requires that the moderator should not move on to a different line of questions until 2/3rds of the group [four-six respondents] have chimed in with their take on the question. Generally speaking, it takes about 4 minutes for the 2/3rds rule to work.
Look at this formula:
- Research time: 100 minutes
- Number of respondents = 8
- Two thirds of 8 = 6 respondents
- One question+ follow-up probes = takes 4 minutes [on average]
- Divide 4 minutes into 100 minutes = 25 questions!
Most moderator guides have a lot more than 25 questions [and a probe is counted as a question].
No wonder moderators have the following complaints:
“My client wants me to get deep insights about 7 concepts – that’s impossible in two hours!”
“Design firm wants to get “fixes” for four new delivery systems to get lotion out of a bottle.”
As a veteran moderator, I have had to fight these same problems for decades and have had to “push back” on client requests by saying:
“Best practices say: Respondents go into sensory overload after seeing 4 items, so 7 is too many – maybe we can have three core concepts in every group and rotate one of the remaining three in each group – so they at least get some commentary – and which three of the 7 are already the best contenders in the minds of your team to be part of the core set that gets tested every time?”
“The power of focus groups or any qualitative process is to get reactions from respondents – they are not designers or engineers or market researchers – they are not wired to “fix” things but they can tell you what works for them and what doesn’t and based on that information, your team can come up with fixes.”
RIVA believes that it is up to the moderator to support clients in honoring best practices and sometimes those best practices have to be illuminated.
SUMMARY
Two-hour focus groups are an American tradition and the majority of focus groups conducted since 1937 fit that tradition. While some elements have stayed the same, a lot has changed, and smart moderators have been finding ways to adapt to those changes while holding true to the tenets of our industry.
Written by: Naomi Henderson, CEO & Co-Founder