Focus Groups - Step by Step Guide

icanmakeitbetter focus groups are a good option to explore complex qualitative concepts through group interaction. They are a little different from online focus groups you may have seen. Focus groups are typically held over 3-5 days and are similar to an online bulletin board, but have a number of advantage over traditional focus groups.

• Each member responds to all open-ended and closed-ended questions in the focus group before seeing any other participants answers.
• After respondents answer all questions, they are able to view the verbatim responses of all members in the group. The member can scroll through all questions and post responses to his/her own post, others' posts and moderator probes.

This flow ensures that each respondent provides his/her own answer to open-ended questions before seeing anyone else's, preventing group think. The discussion section which follows allows for in-depth discussion among members and allows for moderator probing.

As with surveys, you can create one-question focus groups and distribute them to your members in 2 minutes or you can create a longer focus groups. The steps are the same:

1. Create a new focus group: follow detailed steps here.
2. Program questions: for details on question types and detailed question programming instructions, read here. 
3. Add skip logic, format and edit your activity look: for detailed instructions, read articles in the knowledge base under Activities -> Programming, here. 
4. Review and test your focus group: steps and instructions can be found under Activity Overview and Activity Testing.
5. Update the Focus Group Settings: detailed descriptions and explanations on the different options and functionality can be found here.
6. Create a Focus Group tile on the homepage: for steps to update your homepage and add a tile, read here.
7. Distribute the Focus Group to your members: read about options and steps here.
8. Provide access to clients/ internal stakeholders: read about allowing others without admin access to view results in real-time here.
9. Monitor and moderate the Focus Group session: This allows you to probe and ask additional questions as certain topics are discussed. It also allows for more thorough engagement and reminders to members. Read about options and steps here.
10. Analyze results: read about overall stats, platform analysis tools, and download options under Activities -> Results, here.