Generally speaking, you should design groups to be

• Homogeneous within a group with regard to stratifying characteristics (E.g., separate
• groups for teachers, parents, and administrators); and
• Diverse within a group with regard to other characteristics that might affect responses
• (e.g. men and women; Blacks, Hispanics, and whites; old and young; geographical and
• occupational mix; prior knowledge or attitude toward the topic).

Additionally, you should avoid:

• People who know one another; and/or
• People of extremely different rank, socioeconomic status, antagonistic viewpoints.

At a minimum, you need one group for every "stratum" or population sector you want to separately report on (e.g., Teachers vs. Administrators). It is desirable to have several groups for each stratum, or population sector, to allow for organizational variation.

There are some advantages to having managers moderate focus groups with their own staff. Managers are usually:

• Knowledgeable about the topics they are interested in
• Articulate
• Intelligent
• Aware of Subtleties
• Know what information they need.

There are also disadvantages. Managers can often:

• Intimidate
• Talk too much
• Create an atmosphere where dissent is not welcome
• Signal the "preferred" response

Based upon your knowledge of your boss and of the circumstances, you will have to judge if the potential advantages outweigh the potential disadvantages.

There are, generally speaking, 5 main parts of a focus group report:

• Introduction
• Executive Summary
• Methodology
• Analysis
• Conclusions

In reporting the results of focus groups, the following components may be useful:

• Identify agreements (group consensus) and dissenting views
• Combine groups to yield a Synthesis Report
  • Organize report by issue (instead of by group)
  • Discuss similarities and differences by groups and by individuals
  • Restate and answer the research question(s)

There are two important aspects to the results of a focus group: intensity and frequency. Intensity refers to how strongly the opinions or beliefs are felt or articulated; frequency refers to how often they are expressed in the group.

If you only have an impression of how frequently a view was held, use words instead of numbers