Editor's note: Grace Fuller is president of Fuller Research Services, Inc., a Portsmouth, Va., qualitative research consulting firm, and a member of the Qualitative Research Consultants Association (QRCA) Field Committee. Based in New York City, the Qualitative Research Consultants Association (QRCA) is a not-for-profit professional organization of independent qualitative research consultants in North America.
Late one Thursday afternoon I received a call from a local client seeking my quote to moderate a couple of focus groups, plus a quote to do them at my facility. After taking down the specs, I asked him when he wanted to do them. "Is tomorrow too soon?" he asked. Swallowing my gasp, I told him to give me some time to check and I'd call him right back. I understood he was dealing with an imminent public relations crisis and wanted information about how the community was reacting and whether the image of his firm was suffering. As a consultant, I wanted to help him in a timely manner with his research needs. As a facility owner, my mind kept screaming, "Tomorrow?!"
After consulting with my recruitment supervisor, I called him back and told him we could do it. However, I warned him that we would have to relax all but the essential screening criteria - awareness, product usage and availability. To get the information he needed as quickly as possible, he agreed to accept some research trade-offs. The groups were recruited, the research was conducted and the project was successful. In fact, my client negotiated a fair settlement with the other party during the last half of the second group.
In the situation above, I understood my client's urgency. Too often, however, our facility received similar calls in which there was no clear reason for a panicked approach. Usually the urgency stemmed from inadequate planning and unclear research guidelines that were magnified throughout the research process like a game of Gossip. The inevitable results of inadequately planned research projects are reflected in the field.
Good research allows time to think through our goals, gather input from all interested parties prior to taking a project into the field, and to anticipate potential problems and develop strategies to deal with them. As consultants we must encourage our clients to build enough time into a project to conduct it properly. Oftentimes, we are not clear with our clients about the amount of time that is needed to do good research nor are we sufficiently firm about taking the time that's needed to do it right. In a sincere, but misguided, effort to satisfy our clients, we try to conduct research the best we can, even when they make unrealistic demands on us, the field and the entire research process. If we insist on good recruiting from the field, as we should, we also must insist with our clients that we give the field services enough time to do their jobs properly.
The first thing field services do, when given time, is schedule recruiters that are best for a particular project and train them adequately on the project's recruiting objectives and its screening instrument. To do a good job, it's essential to give recruiters time to assimilate the screening information and to ask questions, clear up areas of confusion, plus foresee potential problems. Adequate time gives field services time to get back to us to clarify objectives, make judgement calls as issues arise, and to correct or adjust if problems are identified.
In addition to allowing sufficient time for good recruitment, as qualitative researchers we can also contribute to the recruitment process by taking time to develop well-written, efficient screeners (see accompanying story). Inadequate planning and short deadlines can lead to quickly written screeners that result in overly difficult recruits. Screeners with extraneous questions and complicated, multiple skip patterns increase chances for honest mis-recruits. They also frustrate recruiters and may tempt some who don't fully understand research methodology to bend a little too much in order to get groups filled on time.
While it's important for researchers and their clients to be flexible regarding screening requirements, changing screening guidelines repeatedly can confuse recruiters. Screeners that are changed too frequently after a project is in the field, especially when changes are due to inadequate pre-planning, introduce another opportunity for mis-recruiting.
Projects with unrealistic screening criteria are the most difficult and frustrating of all recruits. They can lead to every moderator's nightmare - a focus group with inappropriate participants or worse, no participants at all.
Our staff had an unforgettable experience with an especially unreasonable recruit. A consultant who had reserved our facility called on the third day of her project's difficult recruit. We were recruiting young, fast-food patrons who had tried her client's new product. She said she needed to change the screener because her client's boss had decided he wanted to screen out all military personnel and their dependents. Since our facility was located in the heart of metro Norfolk, Va. -- home to at least 10 military installations - I questioned this request, one that would disqualify close to half of the young adult population on one screening variable alone. I asked them if they wanted to move the study and said I would waive any charges incurred to date. They chose to go ahead because time was running short, plus schedules and travel arrangements were already made.
I believe they would have placed the study in another market in the first place if they had allowed themselves more time to review and consider their research goals. Our recruitment staff wishes they had placed it elsewhere, for it caused us all some frantic days and sleepless nights! Inadequate planning resulted in a compromise project for everyone.
Problems can occur in the field under the best of circumstances. As qualitative research consultants and moderators, we can lessen that probability by insisting that we allow ourselves and the field enough time to adequately prepare for and execute our clients' projects.