Costs and Scalability

People and Equipment

The costs for focus group participants include:

• The recruiting cost per participant. This will vary according to the screening requirements. If you need participants who are hard to find, the cost will increase.
• The cost of the participant incentives for the focus group session.
• The cost of hiring a professional moderator (and possibly a translator if you are doing international focus groups).
• Travel costs if you are conducting focus groups in different locations.
• The cost of refreshments.
• The cost of the facility and any recording equipment.
• The cost of transcribing and compiling the notes and data from the study.

Time

• The time required to plan a focus group, develop the discussion guide, and pilot test the guide and procedures can range from a few days to a few weeks.
• Most focus groups last from 1-2 hours. For every hour of a focus group, it can take 2-6 hours for transcribing the data and extracting major issues.

Accessibility Considerations

• Focus group facilities should be wheelchair accessible.
• Consider including some disabled users in a focus group or conducting focus groups with disabled users.
• Online chat can be used to conduct focus groups with deaf users.

International Considerations

• Significant planning and an understanding of local cultures are critical. You may need to follow different procedures in different countries.
• Make sure that international moderators possess the domain knowledge necessary for a high-quality focus group.
• Focus groups should be conducted in the participants’ native language whenever possible.
• Hire professional translators and brief them on the goals and topics for the focus group. After each session, ask the translators if there were any difficulties.

Ethical and Legal Considerations

• Having a manager and a subordinate in the same focus group is not recommended since the subordinate will generally not want to contradict the manager.
• Recruiters should not solicit participants from companies that are developing competitive products.
• Participants from the government or regulated industries may not be allowed to accept incentives.

Political issues

Focus group data can be very compelling, but the data are based on convenience samples and may be biased and misleading.

Focus groups are sometimes marketed as a method of usability evaluation, but calling focus groups "usability tests" or "usability evaluations" can be misleading because the participants are not observed while actually working on a task. Focus groups are useful for getting at attitudes toward something, but not very useful for understanding performance.