I’ve always thought that focus group moderators are a lot like professional golfers. The good ones make it look so easy that anyone watching thinks to themselves, “Man, I could do that.”

Uh, no you probably couldn’t. You might be able to smoke a drive down the middle of the fairway when you’re getting in a quick nine on the local links. But can you punch it onto the green to save par when you’re crouching under a pine tree 80 yards out with a tournament on the line?

I’m not sure what the moderating equivalent of the above is, but if anyone could pull it off, it would be Naomi Henderson. In her new book Secrets of a Master Moderator, Henderson, the CEO and founder of RIVA Market Research and RIVA Training Institute, Rockville, Md., compiles her 30+ years of work in the qualitative realm, giving readers an inside look at the deceptively easy-looking act of leading a group discussion.

Moderator maxims

Really, a great place for any budding (or veteran!) moderator to start would be Appendix A, which is a bulleted list of moderator maxims or Naomi-isms. Some of my favorites: “Watch what they do … not what they say.” “When moderating,do more of what works and less of what does not.” “There is never enough time in focus groups, so ‘more respondents’ is not better.” Just taking these sayings to heart would get you a long way toward leading an effective group. But, as we know, there’s so much more to moderating than that, and Henderson does a nice job of taking the reader through all of the aspects of her craft.

Longtime Quirk’s readers will recognize some of the subject matter here, as chapters such as those on the qualities of a master moderator and the art of moderating were drawn from the nearly-dozen articles she has penned for us over the years.

With such a broad topic to cover, she wisely breaks the book up into sections that approach qualitative generally and moderating specifically. I particularly liked the sections on working effectively with respondents and analyzing the data and reporting the results.

Has its drawbacks

The focus group has certainly been under fire in recent years and I fully admit that the technique has its drawbacks. Consumers may not always understand their own motivations nor are they able to effectively communicate them even if they did. So the act of sitting in a room with a bunch of them and asking them – indirectly or otherwise – why they do what they do is fraught with potential problems. Further, many organizations misuse the information they obtain from focus groups, using it either as an excuse for inaction or as an impetus for a series of misguided reactions.

I realize that marketers and researchers are more time-pressed than ever and asking the non-moderators (or non-wannabes) among you to read this book is a bit much. But if focus groups are a regular part of your firm’s research arsenal, you really owe it to yourself. Along with giving you empathy for the person on the other side of the glass (and that could refer to both the moderator and the respondent!) and disabusing you of the dream of chucking it all to become a moderator, it will also make you a better buyer and user of focus group and other qualitative services.

To be sure, just as reading a book of tips from a pro golfer won’t make you into one, reading Henderson’s book won’t transform you into a master moderator. But, to strain the golf metaphor a bit further (she actually uses a different, more colorful comparison in the book at one point, but this is a family magazine), devoting time to soaking up her insights is like being able to spend a weekend shadowing Arnie or Jack or Tiger around Augusta. You’ll learn that, for as easy as the great ones make it look, there’s a lot more to it than meets the eye.