Strategy Survival Guide

Strategy Survival Guide Version 2.1
Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit
home | strategy development | strategy skills | site index
Strategy Skills
> Building an Evidence Base
Collecting data - Interviews & focus groups
> in practice
The aim of these tools is to get a better understanding of the preferences, needs, expectations and
experience of citizens, customers or business people, and how different policy options might impact upon
these groups. Both interviews and focus groups are an excellent way of getting a "real world" view on a
particular issue.
Interviews
During the "Set up" phase of the project, interviews with key policy makers in government and selected
stakeholders can provide important insights; for example, into the nature of the problem, work underway and
the further work required.
During the analytical phase of the project, more comprehensive in-depth interviews with a broader group of
stakeholders including academics and researchers will be required. These interviews will focus not only on
the nature of the problem but causes, prospects for change and the feasibility of possible solutions. The aim
of the interview is to guide the discussion enough to focus on a topic of interest whilst giving the respondents
sufficient scope to steer the conversation to bring in all sorts of tangential matters.
It will be helpful to develop a list of the key questions to cover at such interviews, particularly if they are being
conducted by different members of the project team. It will also be important to write detailed interview notes
to be kept on the shared drive, to enable all team members to benefit from the discussion.
The project team may decide to commission papers or research from selected interviewees following these
interviews.
Focus Groups
Focus groups entail structured interviews with a small number of consumers to explore a particular issue or
policy, or to seek views on areas of concern. Focus groups are generally considered to be a 'qualitative’
method – exploring a small number of people’s views and feelings in-depth, as opposed to large scale
surveys that ask large numbers of people identical questions and that are more suitable to quantitative
analysis.
Generally, projects will want to use a number of groups, with different consumer segments, to test how
different groups feel or will react.
The process typically involves:
• Specifying what is required and selecting a specialist facilitator
• Deciding on the target groups and how these should be segmented (e.g. by gender, socio-economic
group, work – e.g. single mothers, young people, small businesses)
• Producing supporting material for focus groups that can help clarify policy options and developments
and help people easily visualise the proposals
• Following the focus groups, a follow-up discussion with the researchers is useful, and the final report
then needs to bring out the most salient issues.
Alternatives to focus groups include:
• market research surveys e.g. British Social Attitudes Surveys
• modelling at the individual consumer level e.g. representative journeys for FSU transport review
Strategy Survival Guide – Strategy Skills
Page 126