Market research has changed over the past two decades. Telephone research has faded away, mail studies are rarely considered, and younger researchers have likely never conducted a central location test in a mall. However, there is an old-school type of research that has largely survived this upheaval:  the traditional, in-person focus group.

There has been extensive technological progress in qualitative research. We can now conduct groups entirely online, in real-time, with participants around the globe. We can conduct bulletin board style online groups that take place over days. Respondents can respond via text or live video, can upload assignments we give them, and can take part in their own homes or workplaces. We can intercept them when they enter a store and gather insights “in the moment.” We even use technology to help make sense of the results, as text analytics has come a long way and is starting to prove its use in market research.

These new, online qualitative approaches are very useful. They save on travel costs, can be done quickly, and are often less expensive than traditional focus groups. But we have found that they are not a substitute for traditional focus groups, at least not in the way that online surveys have substituted for telephone surveys. Instead, online qualitative techniques are new tools that can do new things, but traditional focus groups are still the preferred method for many projects.

There is just no real substitute for the traditional focus group that allows clients to see actual customers interact around their product or issue. In some ways, as our world has become more digital traditional focus groups provide a rare opportunity to see and hear from customers. They are often the closest clients get to actually seeing their customers in a live setting.

I’ve attended hundreds of focus groups. I used to think that the key to a successful focus group was the skill of the moderator followed by a cleverly designed question guide. Clients spend a lot of time on the question guide. But they spend very little time on something that is critical to every group’s success: the proper screening of participants.

Seating the right participants is every bit as important as constructing a good question guide. Yet, screening is given passing attention by researchers and clients. Typically, once we decide to conduct groups a screener is turned around within a day because we need to get moving on the recruitment. In contrast, a discussion guide is usually developed over a full week or two.

Developing an outstanding screener starts by having a clear sense of objectives. What decisions are being made as a result of the project? Who is making them? What is already known? How will the decision path differ based on what we find? I am always surprised that in probably half of our qualitative projects our clients don’t have answers to these questions.

Next, it is important to remind clients that focus groups are qualitative research and we shouldn’t be attempting to gather a “representative” sample. Focus groups happen with a limited number of participants in a handful of cities and we shouldn’t be trying to project findings to a larger audience. If that is needed, a follow-up quantitative phase is required. Instead, in groups we are trying to delve deeply into motivations, explore ideas, and develop with new hypotheses we can test later.

It is a common mistake to try to involve enough participants to make findings “valid.” This is important, as we are looking for thoughtful participants and not necessarily “typical” customers. We want folks that will expand our knowledge of a subject and of customers will help us explore deeply into topics and develop new lines of inquiry we haven’t considered.

“Representative” participants can be quiet and reserved and not necessarily useful to this phase of research. For this reason, we always use articulation screening questions which raise the odds that we will get a talkative participant who enjoys sharing his/her opinions.

An important part of the screening process is determining how to segment the groups. It is almost never a good idea to hold all of your sessions with the same audience. We tend to segment on age, potentially gender, and often by the participants’ experience level with the product or issue. Contrasting findings from these groups is often where the key qualitative insights lie.

It is also necessary to over-recruit. Most researchers overrecruit to protect against participants who fail to show up to the sessions. We do it for another reason. We like to have a couple of extra participants in the waiting area. Before the groups start, the moderator spends some time with them. This accomplishes two things. First, the groups are off and running the moment participants enter the focus group room because a rapport with the moderator has been established. Second, spending a few minutes with participants before groups begin allows the moderator to determine in advance which participants are going to be quiet or difficult, and allows us to pay them the incentive and send them home.

Clients tend to insist on group sizes that are too large. I have viewed groups with as many as 12 respondents. Even in a two-hour session, the average participant will be talking for just 10 minutes in this case and that is if there are no silences or the moderator doesn’t talk! In reality, with 12 participants you will get maybe five minutes out of each one. How is that useful?

Group dynamics are different in smaller groups. We like to target having about six participants. This group size is small enough that all must participate and engage, but large enough to get a diversity of views.  We also prefer to have groups run for 90 minutes or less.

We like to schedule some downtime in between groups. The moderator needs this to recharge (and eat!), but this also gives time for a short debrief and to adjust the discussion guide on the fly. I have observed groups where the moderator is literally doing back-to-back sessions for six hours and it isn’t productive. Similarly, it is ideal to have a rest day in between cities to regroup to provide an opportunity to develop new questions. (Although, this is rarely done in practice.)

Clients also need to learn to leave the moderator alone for at least 30 minutes before the first group begins. Moderating is stressful, even for moderators who have led thousands of groups. They need time to review the guide and converse with the participants. Too many times, clients are peppering the moderator with last second changes to the guide and in general are stressing the moderator right before the first session. These discussions need to be held before focus group day.

We’d also caution against conducting too many groups. I remember working on a proposal many years ago when our qualitative director was suggesting we conduct 24 focus groups. She was genuinely angry at me when I asked her “what are we going to learn in that 24^th group that we didn’t learn in the first 23?”.

In all candor, in my experience you learn about 80% of what you will learn in the first evening of groups. It is useful to conduct another evening or two to confirm what you have heard. But it is uncommon for a new insight arises after the first few groups. It is a rare project that needs more than about two cities’ worth of groups.

It is also critical to have the right people from the clients attending the sessions. With the right people present discussions behind the mirror become insightful and can be the most important part of the project. Too often, clients send just one or two people from the research team and the internal decision makers stay home. I have attended groups where the client hasn’t shown up at all and it is just the research supplier who is there. If the session isn’t important enough to send decision makers to attend, it probably isn’t important enough to be doing in the first place.

I have mixed feelings about live streaming sessions. This can be really expensive and watching the groups at home is not the same as being behind the mirror with your colleagues. Live streaming is definitely better than not watching them at all. But I would say about half the time our clients pay for live streaming nobody actually logs in to watch them.

Focus groups are often a lead-in to a quantitative study. We typically enter into the groups with an outline of the quantitative questionnaire at the ready. We listen purposefully at the sessions to determine how we need to refine our questionnaire. This is more effective than waiting for the qualitative to be over before starting the quantitative design. We can usually have the quant questionnaire ready for review before the report for the groups is available because we take this approach.

Finally, it is critical to debrief at the end of each evening. This is often skipped. Everyone is tired, has been sitting in the dark for hours, and have to get back to a hotel and get up early for a flight. But, a quick discussion to agree on the key takeaways while they are fresh in mind is very helpful. We try to get clients to agree to these debriefings before the groups are held.

Traditional groups provide more amazing moments and unexpected insights than any other research method. I think this may be why, despite all the new options for qualitative, clients are conducting just as many focus groups as ever.