The Focus group is representative of some homogeneous people. It is one kind of interview conducted by a moderator. The moderator leads the discussion and tries to find out the insight of some target market by discussing a specific topic. However, the focus group has some characteristics.
The characteristics of focus groups are given below-
- Group size
The focus group size may consists 8 to 12 members at once.
- Group composition
The selected members in a focus group may need to be homogeneous.
- Physical setting
The physical appearance needs to be informal and relax environment.
- Time duration
The time duration may be 1and half hours.
- Recording
The focus group needs to record as audio or video for further analysis or seeing body movement and facial expression.
- Moderator
The moderator needs to handle the overall session. The moderator plays a key role in the focus group. Besides, he builds a rapport with members, keep the discussion moving forward, and observes the participant movement. Moreover, the moderator is the central role in the analysis and interpretation of the data. Therefore, the moderator has enough skill, knowledge and experience of the discussion topic and he needs to understand the nature of the group dynamics. However, the modaretor has some key qualities.
The Key qualities of Focus groups moderators are described below:-
- kindness with firmness
The moderator has the quality of kindness and firmness. Besides, he needs to understand empathy in order to generate the necessary interaction.
- Permissiveness
The moderator must have permissive quality. This quality will make group cordiality or purpose is disinteresting.
- Involvement
The moderator must quality to encourage others at any time . This quality will help to stimulate intense personal involvement.
- incomplete understandings
The moderator must encourage participant to make more responsive or specific response that can helps to generate more engagement .
- encouragement
However, there are some many unresponsive members who never response. So, the moderator have the quality to encourage those participant to participate.
- Flexibility
The moderator must be able to remake the planned outline and able to remove the distraction of the group process.
- sensitivity
The moderator must be able to sensitive enough to guide the group members. Besides, He must be enough intellectual and emotional to influence the members.
