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.

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 t...