Venue & Time

  • The venue should be safe and convenient. A convenient location will encourage participants to attend or lower the possibility of sudden withdrawal or absence.
  • A ‘safe’ location is also important because it encourages focus group participants to express their opinions freely without pressure or worries about harm or consequences.
  • The venue should be spacious enough to allow participants to sit in a circle of up to 12 people (10 maximum participants and the moderator and assistant moderator), and quiet enough for recording.
  • The focus group session should be around 45 to 90 minutes long. For a group of 6-8 participants, 30 minutes may be too short to yield enough information. However a discussion over 2 hours would exhaust the participants, and occupy too much of their time.