Focus Group- Biscuits And Posters

What did I know about Focus Groups?

I knew that a focus group meant getting a small group of people together, presenting them with a product and asking them their opinions on it, whether you give them a fixed set of questions or ask them the just speak their mind.

What was the task?

In small groups, we were given sample of two different types of cookie. Using Quicktime audio recorder, we sat around and discussed the cookies we tried referring to:

•  First impressions
•  Smell
•  Texture 
•  Taste
•  Visual impression
•  Quality and cost

After discussing the cookies for a few minutes, we discussed the pros and cons of this style of focus group compared to a written survey. 

What do I know now?

The pros of the focus groups were: the speed of response is quicker- you speak your mind straight away rather than thinking about what to write onto paper, the opinion you give is more detailed as it's less effort to speak your thoughts than to write down a long explanation, this means that your response is more honest as you don't have the time to think about altering it.

However there were some cons with this focus group. If you're sat with a group of people and someone shares their opinion then you may be influenced and agree with with people you're with rather than speaking your own mind. If the researcher has to listen to a 5 minute long piece of audio of qualitative information and pick out individual opinions rather than typing in simple qualitative research, it would be very time consuming and confusing to pick out exact opinions.

After doing the cookie focus group. I decided it would be a good idea to do a focus group to find out what people around the college think of my political poster design. I won't be asking them fixed questions but I will present them with points to refer to so that I can find out the information that will be helpful to me. These points will be as follows:

• Target audience
• Eye catching design?
• Legible text?
• Clear message?
• Encourage you to vote?
• Do you like it?
• Best place to display?

Before I do the focus group I will hand out a quick survey just so I can get the demographic of the group of people.

Ryan, Maisie and I went into the crib to do a focus group with people from around the college to find out what they thought of our political poster designs. We presented them with the talking points and the demographic questionnaire. Above, is the audio from the focus group where they discussed their opinions and below are the results of the demographic questionnaire.

There were three people in our focus group, they were all male and they were all on the Sport BTEC L3 course. The varied in age from 17-19 however they're all eligible to vote next year in the general election. The 17 year old who will be 18 in March and the 18 year old will be voting next year but the 19 year old won't be. I wouldn't have expected males on the Sport course to be very interested or educated about politics so I am not surprised that one of the boys won't be voting and I would guess that the other two that will be voting haven't really thought about what the parties have to offer, they just said that they will vote purely because it's the first time their eligible. 

Here are the posters that the focus group looked at.