Editor's note: Alice Rodgers is president ofRodgers Marketing Research in Canton, Ohio. She is vice president of the Qualitative Research Consultants Association.
Since 1989, respondents in Rodgers Marketing Research focus groups have completed written questionnaires at the end of each session. Essentially, this questionnaire asks people why they participate in focus groups: that is, what is the main reason and what are their multiple reasons. Additional questions are asked regarding demographics and willingness to participate in future groups without being paid.The results of this research have been published in Quirk's Marketing Research Review: Phase I was reported on in "Take the Money and Run?" May 1990; Phase II was reported on in "Money Isn't Everything," December 1990, and Phase III was reported on in "Money Isn't Everything - Part III," in June/July 1992.The findings have been interesting and helpful. For example, knowing that people have a high interest in a topic suggests stressing that topic in the screener. This can make recruiting easier and it can lower incentive fees. A chance to spend an hour and a half to two hours talking about hiking with other bikers is of high interest to most bikers. While some may accept the invitation to attend, in part, because of the gratuity, nearly all come because they want to talk about the subject. Therefore it may be unnecessary to increase the incentive because of low incidence.Additionally, results from all three phases of this ongoing research indicate it is possible to do focus groups on a pro bono basis, with the moderator, facility and participants donating their time. But because this can be a high risk proposition, it should only be done when the research would not otherwise be conducted. In fact, the author successfully did two sets of pro bono focus groups in the past six months. Neither of these sets would have otherwise been done.For both sets of gro...