Editor's note: Linda M. Lynch is market research director at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, Quincy, Mass.

When I started my research career at a full-service market research firm, I had no experience planning or conducting a focus group, but I soon learned. Our firm’s facility had a modest conference room with an observation room that fit five or six (slim) observers and doubled by day as an employee’s (very small) office. Our focus group amenities were sparse. Day and night, participant refreshments consisted of office-brewed coffee (with Cremora), water from the hallway water cooler and a couple of boxes of Dunkin’ Donuts. But we had an ace staff of recruiters who cold-called from the telephone directory or sometimes from a customer list. We recruited to spec and manually kept track of ineligibles to inform our client if unexpected recruiting difficulties emerged. We understood the reasons for particular recruiting specifications so that, when necessary, we could suggest ways to adapt the specs without compromising the research. We paid a competitive honorarium and our moderators were superb and wrote insightful reports.

We forced ourselves into our client company’s skin so that we truly understood the research objectives, what the client hoped to learn, what decisions they would make and what they hoped to accomplish as a result of the groups. We asked lots of questions so we could really understand the product, service or ad campaign being tested and then we could anticipate and further probe participant comments that would be of special interest to our clients, so we really could walk in the client’s shoes. We usually took the initiative on this immersion, with most clients quite pleased to share their details. More than once clients remarked that we understood their product/service/company better than many people working at their organizations. In a phrase, we were good!

Thus, despite the lack of luxurious accommodations, we nearly always produced great work for highly-satisfied clients who returned again and again and my initial experiences with focus group research were about as good as they get.

More demanding

Fast-forward and I’ve joined the client side. I know I’m more demanding than many clients because of my extensive years on the supplier/vendor/partner side of the business but I don’t think I’m unreasonably demanding. In fact, I really understand what our focus group partners need to do and the impediments they face, so in many respects my knowledge makes me more reasonable than many clients.

So what do we want for the focus groups and online bulletin boards we commission? A good recruit. A good moderator. A good report and/or debriefing. Notice I wrote good, not great. Great would be fabulous but we’ll settle for good. The thing is, we need good in all three categories – recruiting, moderating and reporting.

Typically we hire a single company to serve as moderator and reporter and that company subcontracts with a facility and recruiters if they don’t handle that work themselves. This allows us to have a single contract and a single person in charge of all the parts – and presumably, a single point of accountability.

Pet peeve

Bad, inept recruiting is my pet peeve, probably because it’s more difficult to work around than mediocre moderating or reporting. As a client, we go to great lengths to identify the types and mix of folks we want in our groups, whether recruited from a list we provide or not. And we try to do our homework on our end to understand the implications of every criterion we request. We always ask for quotes based on several more recruits than we need with the understanding that we want our minimum of good respondents to show – we don’t mind paying for extras to be sure we have the minimum. And we always allow three-plus weeks for recruiting – so if there is a problem, we should know with still enough time to make adjustments and adhere to our schedule.

We challenge our vendors to tell us up front if they think the honorarium is too low for what we want. We beg them to let us know immediately of any recruiting problems so we have time to assess and redirect most appropriately. Despite paying the recruiting subcontractor and the vendor to check the quotas, we always recheck the quotas since we’ve learned not to depend entirely on the vendor or recruiters to do so properly. Sloppy or inadequate recruiting isn’t just about ignoring instructions; it can have a significant impact on the usefulness of the groups. For instance, if we ask for the person who takes their child to the doctor, that’s who we need in the groups. The reactions of a father of young children to new pediatric office visit requirements might be very different than a mom’s reaction, and if mom takes the children to the doctor, what she thinks is more important than what dad thinks. So please pay attention to the details and give us good recruiting.

Spend time with us

Ask us about our objectives – really understand them. Spend time with us learning about the products, services, business, market environment. We rarely need more than a few hours of time on the front end to discuss these items, review issues, study them, think about them, address them with follow-up questions, get the discussion guide and any other materials right. And please don’t read the discussion guide questions verbatim when moderating. It’s a “guide”! We want you to understand what we’re trying to learn and the overall context so you really get it.

We’re not fussy about the report format. We work equally well with PowerPoint or Word. We’re accepting of bullets or sentences. We like audio and/or video clips but written verbatims are just fine. In other words, the format takes a backseat to the content. For starters, we need correct grammar, spelling and punctuation. We need our company name typed properly and if a moderator/report preparer isn’t sure, please ask rather than get it wrong. We need a concise overview or summary.

We also need detailed backup because we often return to focus group reports at a (much) later date looking for additional information related to the main topic or to enhance our understanding of a secondary topic that was discussed during the group. We need a report that tells a story and how the various key points work together or seem related so it isn’t just data or statements. Sometimes that requires the report writer to really think about the groups, not simply document what transpired in a disparate, seemingly unrelated fashion. Oh, and the report needs to address our key objectives.

At least halfway

Too often we don’t get at least good on all three fronts – recruiting, moderating and reporting. That’s what we really want. Like virtually all clients, we must work within a budget but it is usually not ridiculously constrained. We have a schedule to meet but it is usually reasonable. We don’t believe in skimping on honorariums and we expect to pay extra for extras. In other words, we believe we’re willing to meet our focus group partners at least halfway. And we think if they’re doing a good job, for which we are paying them what has been agreed to, we’re not asking too much.

Some clients only want results without regard for how they were obtained – we want results we can believe in and that meet our needs. So focus group partners, please be good enough.