New Blogger, New Data
Robert Moran | August 10, 2009
As a new blogger on Pollster, I'm looking forward to sharing insights on the craft and new data.
And, on the topic of new data, I have some national polling data from June 12-15 to share regarding focus group participation.
In an n=1,000 national telephone survey StrategyOne asked: "Have you ever been recruited for and participated in a focus goup discussion?"
We really had no idea what percentage of American adults have participated, but now we know.
14%.
Going through the internals, the only two things that stand out are: (1) much heavier participation among $100,000+ households (25%) and (2) college graduates (25%).
This suggests to me that, if anything, the industry focuses on those with discretionary income more than on the base of the SES pyramid.
I was somewhat surprised to see that there wasn't much difference in participation by gender. Given that women make the vast majority of household purchases decisions, I expected to see this data skewed female.
Among the 14% that have participated in a focus group, 86% responded that yes, they would recommend participation to a friend or family member. Although improvement could be made here, I'm happily surprised that 86% would recommend. Moderator techniques have vastly improved, but I do worry that the participant experience could be more pleasant (directions to facility, check in, pre group sandwhich, etc.)
RPM
By Robert Moran | August 10, 2009 10:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)
It's tough to completely understand these data, because we don't know how many people were actually recruited for a focus group. I wonder what percentage was recruited, but did not participate- maybe certain demos are getting left out just because they are hard to recruit. Of course, aggregate survey data may not be the best route for this because it requires recall of the respondent, which isn't perfect.
Posted on August 10, 2009 9:28 PM