How do you design a focus group guide that aligns with your research objectives?

??Define the purpose of your focus group clearly. ??Identify key research questions to guide discussions. ??Select participants who represent your target demographic. ??Create an outline with topics and sub-questions. ??Set a realistic time frame for each section. ??Include open-ended questions to encourage detailed responses. ??Consider recording the session for accurate analysis. ??Pilot the guide to ensure clarity and effectiveness. ??Align the guide with your overall research objectives.

The conceptual framework of your study is the starting point for developing an FGD guide The framework facilitates the development of your objectives.The objectives if well defined provides the basiis for developing your focus group discussion guide whch in turn provides the context of your developing relevant questions for your focus group discussions.

Your purpose should also be informed by scholarly material gathered in the past three to five years. Relevance in research comes from competence and including current material, as well as some foundational research, from journal articles.

To design a focus group guide that aligns with your research objectives, clearly define your specific objectives. Consider the types of participants you need based on relevant demographics, behaviours, experiences, and the social dynamics that might come into play. Think about what insights will be most actionable for your client. Work backwards from the objectives, participant profile, and client needs to determine the best fieldwork approaches, discussion flow, and exercises. Select projective techniques to uncover deeper emotions. Organize the guide into logical sections with timings, open-ended and concise questions, and avoid bias. Align everything to the objectives, plan carefully plan and then have fun making new friends! ;)

To design a focus group guide that aligns with your research objectives, clearly define your specific objectives. Consider the types of participants you need based on relevant demographics, behaviours, and experiences. Think about what insights will be most actionable for your client. Work backwards from the objectives, participants, and client needs to determine the best fieldwork approaches, discussion flow, and exercises. Select projective techniques to uncover deeper emotions. Organize the guide into logical sections with timings, keep questions open-ended and concise, and avoid bias. Align everything to the objectives and carefully plan for an effective guide.

Make sure to avoid questions that can be answered with a simple yes or no. Or if you do decide to include questions like that, be sure to follow up with probing questions about why participants feel that.

Keep questions intentional - write/know the objective behind asking each question. This tip was given to me by someone who had a ~20 year experience at P&G.

Avoid why questions. People often rationalize. Be careful to not turn your questions into your themes. Finally, asking too many questions stays at surface-level knowledge.

Make sure to not allow one or two people, whenever possible, to take over the group with solely their own voice and opinions. Set the stage prior to asking questions by gently reminding the group at the onset that we want to be sure everyone’s voice is heard. Also, if someone is speaking too long, consider closing the physical distance in the room by approaching them directly with head nodding, which encourages many to wrap up their thoughts. Polite physical proximity can also diffuse any heated discussions between participants that may arise. Setting the stage with statements such as “we will likely need to agree to disagree at times” at the onset of the conversation may avoid these kinds of interactions altogether.

It advises avoiding leading or sensitive questions and suggests a logical sequence: starting with warm-up questions, moving to core questions, and ending with wrap-up questions. This approach ensures a smooth and respectful discussion aligned with research objectives.

No matter how carefully you design your topic guide, the chances are your focus group participants will answer questions out of order - anticipating what you've yet to ask and returning to questions you've previously covered. You need to be able to 'go with the flow' adapting the order of questions on the fly while ensuring you still cover everything. I try to collapse the topic guide down into something that can be written on one side of A4. That way I always have all of the questions in front of me at all times during the discussion.

It’s a great idea to draft probing questions to assist with follow up and diving deeper during the conversation. This way you don’t have to come up with additional questions on the fly and inadvertently miss an opportunity to get more information.

Be mindful of framing your questions in a neutral, unbiased manner to avoid influencing participants' responses. Phrasing questions in a leading or suggestive way can skew the results and compromise the validity of your findings. Be prepared for the fact that in organizational settings (my primary field), people will tend to withhold or distort data they feel defensive about. Alternatively, especially in companies that have never paid proper attention to organizational climate, employees will likely seek relief and share their stories with someone genuinely listening (finally). It might be tempting to accept these stories as an accurate depiction, but often, prompt questions reveal that the story is actually slightly different.

If you are unable to find or access people similar to your target group, aim to test with individuals who are somewhat knowledge but not directly involved in the project the research is related to.

This step can often fall to the wayside when working to gain insights quickly, particularly in an applied research setting. I’d add that advocating for testing/piloting questions is part of the research education/“democratization” process - you may find that non research experts conducting research may not want to prioritize this step but by letting people learn through their experience they may come to better appreciate the expertise and support of research. Practice patience.

Stimulus materials are a key part of any focus group and ideally should be developed in parallel with your questions. Their aim is to prompt reflection and recall, encourage divergent opinions and also make the experience more enjoyable for participants.

Be sure your space accommodates comfort to increase your probability of receiving answers to your questions that reach the depth of the experience of your participants for your study. Noisy areas (beyond the room) can detract from comfort level, therefore detracting from the level or depth of content you may receive. Consider providing lunch, coffee, snacks, a bathroom break, too, for increased comfort. Tools should include ground rules for the discussion at the onset to provide the highest achievable comfort level for all.

Stimulus materials can certainly be an important part of a focus group or even a one-on-one interview, but be mindful of how they are used, especially if the interaction will be transcribed. It can be difficult to catch responses when people are speaking over a video, and if a moderator is speaking over a video with audio content, it may be difficult for participants to catch what they are saying or to pay full attention to the video intended to be stimulus material. Keep in mind that communication preferences differ, if you give a handout, perhaps read aloud the pertinent information, as well, so people can see and hear it, and it also avoids mumbled responses that may be difficult to catch as people "think aloud" at first sight.

Don't be afraid to adjust that guide after the first or second interview. We like to think of the guide as a living, breathing thing, not a script. Leave a lot of room for going where the discussion needs to go, but still focus on those project objectives. This is why AI won't replace a good qualitative moderator!

It is very important not to call a focus group an interview as it’s not. Focus groups require carefully developed questions to be discussed in a group. It is the discussion and not purely the answer that’s of interest.

Be prepared use your questions in a different sequence than the one you've prepared. Focus group participants often pre-empt a question you've yet to ask, or return to one you've asked a few minutes previously. You've got to go with the flow while ensuring you cover all the topics you need to. I often write out my questions as a circular mind-map so I can see them all at once. That way it's much easy to keep track of what you've have and haven't yet asked - much better than trying to leaf back and forth through a pile of pages

Focus groups presume a very Western perspective on each person having her/his own opinion. There are many times when focus groups unfortunately don't work. Gender, age and other factors will play into how focus group participants interact. It has been my experience that people in non-Western contexts may not build on what has been said but rather state their ideas, which are often the same as those already stated.

Organizing the stimuli and managing this during the discussion is important. Presenting materials in a way that allows each participant to have time to process the stimuli and view it and perhaps handle it. Writing down initial reactions will help to keep them grounded in their own reactions to avoid group think/ bandwagon-ing.

When designing a focus group, the researcher must have a clear understanding of the research objectives and what he aims to uncover. The researcher must develop open-ended questions that are thoughtful, and logical for spontaneous and detailed discussions followed by probing and follow-up questions to uncover detailed insights.

In these days of online qual, it's remarkable how much value we get out of engaging with participants where they're at, on their turf, rather than recruiting to a specific location. The bonus of getting that glimpse into their lives via live online qual is golden. I try to always design a guide that leverages our ability to get some 'accidental ethno' moments.

Creating a focus group guide that syncs with research objectives requires a well-defined strategy. Follow the below steps. 1. Precisely outline research goals. 2. Pinpoint crucial themes and needs. 3. Develop open-ended questions that facilitate thorough discussions that align with the research scope. 4. Build the conversation based on participant insights and explore by introspecting in detail. 5. Test the guide and refine it based on the initial dataset.