Focus Group Moderating
NWRG has two in-house moderators. In addition, we partner with independent focus group moderators who offer special expertise in different areas.
NWRG works closely with the Client Project Team to develop the final questions or topics that will be used to structure discussions within the focus groups. This focus group guide is open-ended in nature. The guide ensures that the moderator addresses all key topic items, but permits a great deal of flexibility in responses to most questions, and allows the moderator to probe for further information as necessary.
Building trust early on provides respondents with security to go below the surface and reveal their innermost feelings and motivations. Our moderators use a variety of questioning techniques to elicit a depth of response from all participants. These techniques include, but are not limited to:
- Straightforward Questioning - used to get specific answers on attitudes and/or behaviors.
- Written Exercises - used to elicit responses from individuals that group dynamics have not biased. An example of a written exercise is a card sort. This is a type of brainstorming exercise where the participants fill as many cards as they can with key attitudes that drive a specific behavior – e.g., taking appropriate medications. Participants, as a group, then “sort” these cards into logical “stacks” based on commonalities or a specified criterion (i.e., level of perceived importance). The moderator then probes for additions to each stack and the emotional “connection” to each. This kind of mental mapping allows us to understand the real attitudes and values that cause individuals to think or behave as they do.
- Projective Techniques - go beyond simple straightforward answers to questions providing insight into consumer decision processes, attitudes, and behaviors. Projective techniques include adjective checklist, writing obituaries, drawing, sentence completion, etc. For example, we could have participants describe an ideal visit to their health care provider, what questions they would need answered, how these questions would be answered, etc. These techniques are particularly useful at getting at both the tangible and intangible ideas.