Early online focus group caveats still resonate
In his May 1995 article “Focus groups on the internet: an interesting idea but not a good one,” veteran moderator and frequent Quirk’s author Thomas Greenbaum made a number of good points that, far from being the defensive carping of a traditionalist in the face of a technology that treatens his livelihood, are still relevant today. First, he cited the loss of some of the group dynamics that are inherent to gathering people in a room for a conversation. Second, the difficulties related to recruiting online respondents, who may find it easier to fake or misrepresent their identity. Third, related to the first point, not being physically in the same space with the respondents detracts from the skilled moderator’s ability to read the room and pick up on cues that could alter the path of the discussion. Fourth, Greenbaum argued that respondents, freed from the duty and the scrutiny of sitting in a room with the moderator, could be easily distracted and be doing other things like listening to music or watching TV. While his other assertion that the current state of online video technology wasn’t good enough for effectively showing packaging mockups or TV ads is now moot, everything he mentioned is still likely top-of-mind for online qual practitioners nearly three decades later.
The few, the rich, the online
Our early articles on conducting research online frequently mentioned the need to consider that not everyone has access to the internet. From 1998:
“An internal corporate survey may or may not be appropriate to place on the Web, depending both on the company and the employees being surveyed. Boeing Company, for example, has used the internet for surveys designed for managers and professional workers who are provided with computers and internet accounts by the company, but when surveying factory-floor employees who may not have the access and equipment, the more traditional pencil-and-paper methodology prevails.”
Another piece cited an early 1996 report: “Twenty percent of the American workforce and 5 percent of U.S. households say they currently have access to the Web…For the most part, these users represent the small (10 percent) but influential, highly-educated, high income, ‘early adopter’ segment of the population.”
According to Statista, current U.S. internet penetration is 91.8 percent. My, how things have changed.
Make sure it’s optimized for Netscape
A June/July 1997 article from James Watt (“Using the internet for quantitative survey research”) made strong arguments for the benefits of moving beyond mailed questionnaires: speed; cost (no more printing; no more postage!); ease of making changes on the fly rather than having to reprint and re-send); and the ability to spruce up the look of the surveys. “Internet questionnaires delivered with the Web have some unique advantages. They can be made visually pleasing with attractive fonts and graphics. The graphical and hypertext features of the Web can be used to present products for reaction or to explain service offerings. For respondents with current versions of Netscape or Internet Explorer, the two most popular Web browsers, audio and video can be added to the questionnaire.”