What You Will End Up With
A record of what community members say about the issues that matter to them, their concerns, the barriers and resistance they see, the resources already in the community, and the solutions they recommend. You will also have a preliminary plan of action from the session and a written summary that goes back to everyone who took part.
Before You Start
Settle the basics before you invite anyone.
- Decide which topics each session will cover: issues and concerns, barriers and resistance, community resources for change, and recommended alternatives and solutions.
- Choose places that are easy to find, accessible and comfortable, such as a library, school or place of worship. Hold forums at different sites if you want to represent the whole community.
- Schedule in the evening so work and school do not get in the way.
- Fix the day, place, time, how long it will last and how many groups you will run before you sign anyone up.
- Put the date, time, location and purpose on every flyer or message.
- Think now about who will not come on their own: women, people who rarely speak in public, people who cannot reach the venue. Plan how to reach them, and get their permission for anything you record.
Steps
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Recruit in person. Do not rely on notices alone. Ask community leaders and a mix of other residents to attend, and ask each of them to bring others. For focus groups, spread invitations across a representative sample of the target population, such as different facilities or business types. If you invite only the most vocal or extreme voices, you will hear only them.
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Pick the method for each purpose.
- A public forum gets a wide range of views in one room. Keep working groups to fewer than 30 to 40 people and split larger crowds.
- A focus group is a small discussion led by a trained facilitator on one topic. It is planned in composition and setting so that people feel free to speak. It gives spoken, open-ended answers and lets you see how people react to each other. It is not useful where the answer is set by medical facts or public health prevention, such as controlling a flu outbreak, since residents' opinions are not what decides it.
- An interview is a conversation with a purpose, good for in-depth views on assumptions or perceptions. The interviewer controls the order of questions and makes sure each one is answered. Interviews are inefficient for straight numbers: use a form. Large-scale phone interviews are slow and expensive, and mailed questionnaires suit big groups better.
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Run the session. In a forum, record the discussion for each topic on newsprint where everyone can see it. In a focus group, set up the room and the mix of people so that nobody feels threatened, and make brief eye contact with people who have not yet spoken, elicit opinions without judging them and make clear that all opinions are respected. Tell focus group participants that individual responses stay confidential.
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Interview with care. Find out an interviewee's personal agenda beforehand, because people may steer the conversation toward their own interests. In a highly structured interview, ask every subject the same questions from the same list. Keep phone interviews to about ten minutes unless you have arranged more, and write down what you hear as you go instead of trusting your memory.
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Record accurately. Arrange a recorder in advance, or use audio recording with the group's permission. If you do not record audio, name a person whose only job is to write down the key points.
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Use incentives when goodwill is not enough. Options include money, food and drink, public recognition, items to take home or later training. Pick something your participants would actually value.
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Close and report back. Before people leave, say aloud what the group accomplished and sketch the first moves you will take together. Afterward, mail a written summary of the ideas to every participant. Thank them and tell them how they can stay involved.
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Count who came. After each session, compare the people in the room with the community you set out to hear. If women, older people, young people or any group you were counting on are missing, add a session at a different site or time, or an interview with someone who can speak for them, before you draw conclusions.
A useful rule of thumb for choosing among the three methods: forums for breadth, focus groups for spoken, open-ended answers and the way people react to each other, and interviews for people who hold specialist knowledge or would not speak freely in a group. You can use all three in one assessment, and each makes up for a weakness in the others.
Using AI Safely
An assistant can tidy notes and sort comments by topic. Treat what it gives you as a draft.
- Compare any summary with the newsprint or the audio before you use it, and check that the topics, such as barriers and community resources, are all there and nothing is invented.
- Do not paste in names, or anything that could identify someone who spoke in confidence.
- Keep audio files and notes private to the team. People agreed to be recorded for your assessment, not for a tool you did not tell them about.
- Let it draft the participant summary, but read every line before you send it.
Common Mistakes
Recruiting only the easy contacts. If you skip personal recruitment of leaders and diverse residents, the input will not represent the community.
Crowding the room. Keep working groups under 30 to 40 people, and split anything bigger so more people can take part.
Trusting memory. Without a recorder or an audio recording made with permission, you will lose detail. Phone interviews are the worst for this.
Using focus groups for the wrong question. They collect opinions. They do not settle facts.
Skipping the report back. People gave their time, and you are obliged to share what came of it.