Strategy Survival Guide

• 'ghost shoppers’ e.g. researchers or actors directly experiencing services - used by the Consumer
Association
• role playing
• event diaries e.g. National Travel Survey based upon travel diaries.
It is important to be very clear about the purposes of the exercise – what evidence the focus groups are
looking to collect, how the event can be tailored to the participants while maintaining analytical rigour and
how to prime the groups. Consideration should also be given to which social groups need to be consulted,
how broad the consultation should be and how the groups will be managed and facilitated.
A useful first step is to design some scenarios for the groups to consider – this is a useful exercise to
organise the team’s own thoughts, and will help to design the consultation, and provide a clear view of what
the groups should focus on. Scenarios also offer the opportunity to be creative – they can set out existing
practices or problems, but they can also be used to pose some hypothetical questions.
It is also useful to consider using external expertise to organise, host and facilitate the groups – MORI and
others have good expertise in this area. If an external consultant is involved, consideration should be given
to how the results should be presented back – either as a factual report, a presentation, a report with
suggested solutions to problems posed etc. It can be better to simply get a factual read-out as this leaves
more scope for the team to interpret the findings for themselves and design creative solutions.
Strengths
• Interviews give an insight into problem from a range of perspectives.
• Stakeholders can act as sounding boards and provide a reality check.
• Can generate new ideas and hypotheses, and can challenge prior assumptions of policy-makers
about public attitudes.
• Provides insights for policy making by indicating some of the drawbacks of existing arrangements or
potential new policies.
• Gives a more considered view than conventional surveys, in a more natural 'conversation’ with other
members of the public.
• Understanding motivation.
• Relatively cheap.
Weaknesses
• Time-consuming.
• Stakeholders may try to apply pressure through lobbying.
• Views from selected frontline organisations will be based on individuals' experiences and may not
always be representative. Therefore conclusions need to be assessed in the light of other evidence.
• Be aware of limitations: focus group participants won’t have a policy background (obviously) and
won’t be able to discuss detailed policy issues. Focus groups may not throw up many new ideas or
produce very rational discussion (though useful to be aware of the apparent contradictions in
consumers’ views) and results may not be of too much help to the project.
• As the focus groups tend to involve small numbers they may not be representative of the wider
population, or even of the narrower population from which they are drawn. A single focus group per
consumer segment/policy issue means that any differences between groups may not be robust and
caution should be taken over wider inferences.
References
The Good Research Guide, Martyn Denscombe
Strategy Survival Guide – Strategy Skills
Page 127