Question: A focus group usually consists of about how many participants?
Answer: Focus groups usually consist of 6 to 12 participants.
A focus group is a group meeting that consists of demographically similar people. These people are asked about their views, have different discussions about an idea, a new product or something else. The main point of a focus group is to get the participants reactions. Focus groups are used to recognize and investigate how people think and perform, and they shed light on why, what, and how questions. Focus groups are very important to marketers as it can give them a real answer on their idea and an unbiased opinion. I have been in a couple focus groups. One of which was a new program my company was looking to purchase on organizing, sending, and receiving faxes better. Before this happened, we were getting faxes through the EHR and faxes were going missing and were not sending right. It was not a very structured process. In this focus group they showed us the software and informed us how it worked step by step. In this focus group, there was one person from different departments that would be using this software. Each person was asked to write down any suggestions or questions and after the software was explained and demonstrated, we all discussed it. Every person had a different question or suggestion as we all worked in different areas and would be using this software in different ways. It was very important to get opinions from different areas to get more answers and see it differently. It also helped the engineers fix areas where they did not realize there was issues and suggestions were taken into consideration for potential enhancements.
Focus groups are essential when trying to get true opinions about an idea or product. I’d say it is crucial to have a focus group before launching anything to make sure you get enough feedback and can fix problem areas or add any kind of enhancements.
Hi Kelsie. I read your post and as always I thought you did an excellent job. I’m also agree with you about focus groups as I also have been apart of these working in IT. Software and custom off the shelf application developer companies always ask IT support staff to participate in focus groups to give their opinions, questions and overall review on newest version of software that may be just released that you been using in your environment for years. A prime example of this is SAAS which stands for software as a service. Before SAAS was adopted many applications were client based. Working in medical care environment would always require focus groups to be used simply because the latest and greatest software applications are always be implemented.
Hey Kelsie!
Great post! I completely agree. Having a focus group before launching a product is the only great way to get necessary feedback on how a product is functioning or meeting the needs of the customer or consumer. I also like how you were able to apply this topic to your real world experiences. I would also like to say that I think the range of 6-12 is a perfect range. This way there is enough people to get a well rounded range of ideas but there is not so many people that voices get drowned out during the conversations.
Great post, Kelsie!
I haven’t been in any focus groups before, but it seems like an excellent method to find and fix as many problems as possible. I have noticed that different people will encounter completely different problems when using a program or app for the first time, depending on how much experience and prior knowledge they have about certain programs and what they are trying to achieve with the program. Often, people do encounter problems that we would never have expected. I remember trying to walk my Grandma through a new app over the phone. The problem was that she was not familiar with the terminology used for options, so the terms seemed obscure to her.
The difficult part of leading a focus group must be to convince all participants that their honest opinion is critical to the process of improving the program. If a member of the group feels that pointing out problems may be perceived as negativity and opposition to adopting the new program, that member’s comments will be minimal and skewed to please those in leadership.