Picking the right questions
Think about what type of questions will help you get the insights you need.
Think about your respondents
When writing a question, ask yourself whether the respondents:
- can understand the question
- will be able to answer the question
- will be willing to answer the question
- will be led to answer the question in a certain way
If you need the patients to understand some topics before your focus group, to get their feedback on that, you can include it in your pre-read materials or explain it during your focus group.
Be clear
Make the questions easy to understand and be explicit with what you mean.
There shouldn’t be room for interpretation, remember:
- not all respondents will understand the question in the same way
- don't be afraid to use definitions or give examples (e.g. a biopsy is a medical procedure where a small sample of body tissue is removed so it can be examined under a microscope.)
- to follow the guidelines for writing for a lay audience
Keep them engaged
If you want patients to participate fully in your focus group, you need to keep them engaged. Get as creative and interactive as you can when gathering insights. Use activities and discussion stimuli as much as you can. These techniques will help keep patients engaged but also help explore ideas in different ways. Here are some examples you can use.
You can also periodically mix up groups to keep the conversation fresh and reenergise people. You can do this at random (assign people a number) or by topic themes (people move to their preferred or assigned topic).
Question order matters
Question order is important to engage attendees and ease them into the discussion. Questions should be ordered in a logical sequence and start broad before moving on to the more specific or sensitive questions. Think about whether the content of a question could influence how respondents answer subsequent questions.
