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Online Focus Group Moderating Tips
Written by Lynda Maddox
Doing online moderation is somewhat different from moderating traditional
groups. Here are 14 tips:
- Recruit well. Just as with traditional groups, you'll need
to over-recruit to account for no-shows, and you'll need to compensate
participants at the same level as with traditional groups.
- Prepare your moderator's guide thoroughly and know it well.
You'll be typing and thinking at the same time, so you won't have a
lot of time to glance at your guide.
- Prepare long descriptions and/or links ahead of time in a text
document. Test them to make sure they work and be ready to cut and
paste them into the discussion. Practice this ahead of time to avoid
fumbling.
- Feel comfortable with your facility before you begin. Make
sure it's simple to use. Bells and whistles may be fun to look at, but
as a moderator, you want to make sure that your facility works quickly
and simply and that there's someone on staff to offer assistance.
- Arrive early at the facility to great early arrivals. Acknowledge
their arrival and let them know that you'll be beginning soon. As each
participant arrives, be sure to acknowledge him or her. If you don't,
the participant can be insecure about being in the right place at the
right time.
- Set expectations. At the beginning of the focus group, make
the participants feel comfortable with the online format. Tell them
that spelling and grammar are not important. You're looking for honest
opinions.
- Set participant ground rules. Tell participants that it's okay
to agree or disagree with one another, but ask them to be sure to answer
all the questions from the moderator.
- Learn participants' names and keep track of what each person is
saying. Respond to individuals by name. This is extremely important!
If you don't do this, you will lose people from the group discussion.
If you want everyone to respond, be sure to say this. Remember that
you won't have the physical presence of the participants and visual
cues to keep people involved, so you have to keep track of them and
use names to assure participation.
- Ask everyone to answer a question at once. Moderators often
begin traditional focus groups by going around the table, asking each
person to answer one at a time. In an online group, you can achieve
the same effect by asking everyone to respond at once. Tell participants
they need not wait for others to type in their answers. Both moderator
and participants will see each person's response as they finish typing,
and dialogue can follow.
- Be prepared for less continuity in the conversation flow than with
traditional groups. Differences in typing speeds combined with a
lack of physical presence means that some participants may spend a longer
time than others answering a question. Their responses may come once
you're already on to another topic. In essence, a good online moderator
has to be skilled at handling two or three conversations at once.
- Develop excellent keyboard skills and a great memory. Some
moderators find it tough to type and remember names and conversation
at the same time. This takes practice, so you may want to do some mock
focus groups before you do the "real thing." Observing an expert moderator
is also very helpful.
- Make the focus group conversational, "chatty," and elicit the personalities
of the participants. Use colloquial expressions. Use "smiley faces"
and other Internet symbols and phrases, but be sure to explain shortcut
phrases the first time to use them, i.e. LOL (laughing out loud). Failure
to do this makes some participants uneasy that they are not as Internet
savvy as other participants, and this can reduce participation.
- Keep track of participants. If you haven't heard from someone
in awhile ask, "Mary, are you still with us?"
- Practice makes perfect. It's often a good idea to hire an experienced
online moderator for your first few groups. By observing, you'll quickly
learn the "tricks of the trade." Good Luck!
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