Focus Groups from Afar

Tips & Tricks for Virtual Focus Groups

Don’t you just love focus groups?  Such a nice way to bring stakeholders together to share ideas and experiences, with the added benefit of in-person connection. We’d laugh, we’d cry, we’d share important data. And then 2020 happened. 

How can we hold on to one of our favorite data collection methods during this time of social distancing?

Introducing… the virtual focus group! Virtual focus groups are actually not a new thing for Sharp Insight. Although in-person focus groups are still our ideal choice, since 2015 we have run virtual focus groups for a variety of reasons.  For some projects, geography got in the way and virtual discussions were just more feasible than flying folks in for two hours of great data sharing. In other cases, funding and/or childcare constraints made hosting an event in a physical space more challenging, so a virtual gathering was a better fit for the project.

In this time of social distancing, many of us might be faced with the challenge of how to host a meaningful, data-rich focus group with our participants when we can’t physically be together. We’ve fine-tuned our system over the years, with a good bit of extra practice over the past few months, and wanted to share some of what we’ve learned.

Check out our newest tip sheet, Tips & Tricks for Virtual Focus Groups.  Whether you’re exploring virtual focus groups to maintain COVID-19 public health measures or you’re thinking of adopting them as a longer term evaluation approach, we hope these tips are useful to you and your team. And of course, we’re always here to help if you need any support with your focus group endeavors.