3/13/2013: Everything You Need to Know About Focus Groups
- Start:
- March 13, 2013 1:00 pm
- End:
- March 13, 2013 2:00 pm
- Cost:
- FREE
- Category:
View This Session’s Archive Here
What is the difference in conducting focus group research or survey research? Participants in this session will learn how to choose between qualitative research such as focus groups, and quantitative research such as surveys. We will then create a list of the necessary research and administrative tasks for a focus group, and learn some tricks of focus group facilitation.
Takeaways:
- Learn to choose between a survey or focus group process
- Create a list of the important research and administrative tasks for focus groups
- Develop some tricks for focus group facilitation
- Understand the right items to emphasize via analysis and reporting
 Rena Cheskis-Gold is a demographer and the founding principal researcher at Demographic Perspectives, LLC, a consulting firm that provides demographic, survey, policy, and market research services for the non-profit, higher education, and businesses communities, and for public agencies. Rena and her team provide custom data and analysis for strategy to be used in planning initiatives, donor research, new policy formulation, program assessment, accreditation, and other administrative decision-making.
She also teaches, speaks, and writes regularly on data-driven decision-making for strategy, assessment, communications, and for managing change. She has been a regular guest speaker on utilizing survey and focus group research for community and stakeholder strategy at both the Harvard Business School and the Yale School of Management. She holds degrees in Demography and Population Studies from the University of Illinois and Brown University. |
 Demographic Perspectives was fashioned in response to Rena Cheskis-Gold’s years in-house in the Office of Institutional Research at Yale University. Faculty and staff would often come to her and say, “Someone told us we need to do focus groups or a survey. Why, which one is best, and what do we do next?” The firm employs many methodologies, including surveys, stakeholder interviews, focus groups, population modeling, mapping and projections, benchmarking, and many types of data analysis.. “No one methodology is right or wrong; it depends on the population and stakeholder community, the timeline, the resources, and more,” says Ms. Cheskis-Gold.
Demographic Perspectives works with each client to approach problems with a customized data-driven process, stressing a full strategic outline. Participants in Rena’s previous webinar on “Data-Driven Decision-Making for Nonprofits” will recognize this process: articulation of the problem and goals, data gathering and analysis, project communication and public outreach, development of planning steps, project implementation, post-project evaluation and assessment. |
