Editor’s note: Janet A. Stanfel is senior research director at AFFINA Corporation, a Troy, Mich., research firm.

A good way to maximize the value of qualitative focus group research is to add a quantitative component. This can be achieved in a timely and cost-efficient manner by using participant recruitment as a data collection tool rather than merely a screening process. Traditionally, the singular goal of focus group recruitment screeners is to identify people who fit pre-defined criteria related to demographic indices, purchase patterns, product preferences or other features, in order to invite them to participate in a group discussion with “similar” others. Because it is expected that the recruit will be completed as quickly, efficiently, and economically as possible, the screeners are short, and the only questions that are asked relate directly and solely to the criteria that have been established for focus group discussion participation.

Although the standard approach may result in high-yield recruiting, it falls short in terms of the potential overall value that the research can provide. Our company, AFFINA, advocates taking full advantage of the focus group recruit by adding relevant questions to the screener, and making use of the collected data within the focus group setting, or in addressing other client issues.

This approach to data collection may provide the greatest benefit when focus group participants are being drawn from a client’s customer list or database, because it not only presents the client with a prime opportunity to learn more about customer needs, but also contributes to the total customer relationship-building process. This additional benefit is achieved, in part, because in asking a few key questions, (especially when a customer does not qualify for the group due to quotas or other criteria), the recruiter conveys an interest in the customer and sends the message “You are important to us.” Moreover, regardless of recruitment status, data that are appended to the current customer database become part of the most essential mechanism for driving customer satisfaction and loyalty.

An opportunity

Every customer contact is an opportunity to learn more about what customers need, want and expect in the way of products and services, what they have purchased in the past and anticipate purchasing in the future. Even the brief contact afforded by a focus group recruiting effort can provide a company with new customer insights. Since the expense of telephone recruiting principally lies in making the appropriate contacts (i.e., getting through to the right person), there is a great deal to be gained by adding a few questions to the screener, with minimal additional expense. It is a creative data collection option that can be used to contribute to a solid foundation of customer knowledge. As indicated, the data obtained from this approach may be used within the context of the focus groups to augment the qualitative research, or may fill other, more quantitative needs.

The quantitative aspect of focus group recruitment can be considered from the following perspective. Recruiting for a “typical” focus group project consisting of four groups will require making approximately 700 attempts to speak with prospective participants. Although 60 percent (or 420) of these 700 attempts will result in actual contacts, another 20 percent will decline to respond to any of the questions or participate in the process at all. This still leaves a significant quantitative sample of 350 respondents or customers who could provide data on a set of questions. In a random sample of n=350, the process yields results with a maximum sampling error of ±6.0 percent with 95 percent confidence. Therefore, the data obtained as a “value-add” to a focus group recruit would be considered statistically reliable if proper sampling procedures were followed.

For use in the focus group discussion itself, the data so collected can be used in drafting the moderator’s guide or development of other materials to be used in the group setting. Beyond the focus group setting, and assuming that appropriate sampling techniques have been employed, the data collected in this process can be used as any other quantitative data obtained in a telephone survey.

As one example of this approach, AFFINA conducted a series of focus groups with business customers of a telecommunications provider, and added several questions related to voice mail usage to the screener that was used to recruit participants. The goal of the research was to provide direction for product development and marketing programs. By adding questions to the screener, the recruiting process provided vital information from 132 customers regarding frequency of use, how voice mail was used, and awareness and use of features. The data indicated a relatively low level of usage of the available voice mail features, which was primarily due to a lack of awareness. In this instance, the quantitative findings made it possible to identify an important topic to pursue in the focus group discussions, and led to further development of ideas for educating customers and informing them of the full range of benefits and features.

In another application, AFFINA conducted focus groups regarding alumni donor retention issues for a major urban university. The research was used primarily to better understand donor motivations. The following statistics demonstrate how the final quantitative data was obtained during the effort to recruit participants for four focus groups:

  • made 2,889 call attempts (dialings);
  • made 953 contacts (spoke directly to a donor);
  • completed “interviews” with 238 donors to obtain value-added data.

In this example, the addition of 12 brief questions added an important quantitative component to the program of research. The data rendered valuable insights regarding the strength of donor affiliation with the university, activity involvement and event attendance, recall of solicitation of donations, and motivating factors. The data also provided demographic indices for targeting retention efforts.

For companies that make frequent use of focus groups, it may be advantageous to use the recruitment data collection approach to create an “omnibus” study by adding different sets of questions to focus group recruits over time, and accumulating extensive data on a number of different issues. As indicated, this data could be incorporated into a company’s database, or alternatively it could be maintained in separate data file(s) depending upon the company’s needs. To the extent that the questions remained consistent, It would allow for a longitudinal perspective on customer preferences and making comparisons over time.

There is yet another reason for recommending the addition of key questions to a focus group recruitment screener. At this time, when consumer and business telephone contacts are becoming increasingly difficult due to active lifestyles and the prevalence of answering machines and voice mail, it is not atypical for 25 percent of all calls in a telephone survey to result in “no answer” or “answering machine/voice mail” dispositions. Therefore, it is simply not practical for any company to overlook any opportunity to talk with customers and obtain supplemental customer information that could be used in many different ways including product development, marketing strategies, development of customer loyalty initiatives, customer segmentation and profiling.

Take it further

We also advocate taking focus group recruitment further by making it part of a dynamic process that both feeds into and draws upon the information in a client’s customer database. For example, rather than just calling customers randomly for a market research survey or participation in a qualitative focus group discussion, a database can be “worked” or “mined” to profile the best customers to include in a group given specified research objectives. Therefore, in addition to providing a sampling frame for recruitment, a database is a critical piece in defining group composition and using more targeted, selective approaches to qualitative market research.

With each new recruitment project, data can be collected and added to the customer database. In turn, this new data can be used to advantage in further focus group recruitment efforts, and if key variables are included, the data could also be used in predictive modeling and customer segmentation analysis.

Enriched database

To summarize, by thinking “outside of the box” and taking a somewhat different approach to traditional research methodologies, a company’s database can be enriched, and qualitative approaches can be made more valuable. By simply adding a few questions to a focus group screener, companies can make more effective use of the customer contacts that are being made without significantly increasing costs.