SERVICES
Focus Groups
Getting to the root of the matter.
Collaborative Insight Through Structured Focus Groups
Our Focus Groups service provides a dynamic forum for gathering in-depth perspectives about your program or project from participants, users and other stakeholders. Focus groups enable people to discuss among one another, in a structured and safe environment, how your current and planned activities are perceived, revealing insights about assumptions, motivations, and challenges that numbers alone can’t capture. Using approaches grounded in qualitative research, educational and social science research, we design and facilitates sessions that align with evaluation or other data gathering needs. As with our Interview and Site Visit services, we take great care to design ethical, authentic experiences in a trusting environment. We draw upon our extensive expertise with interdisciplinary research, education and evaluation to ensure that each focus group yields meaningful, actionable information and provides you formative feedback and impact assessment of your program.
Dr. Lisa Kaczmarczyk has served as the external evaluator for our multi-year, interdisciplinary National Science Foundation Research Traineeship (NRT) project in smart cities and smart living. From the beginning, Dr. Kaczmarczyk demonstrated excellent proficiency in various aspects of evaluation and assessment, including taking time to read and understand the grant proposal, guiding us in the creation of the logic model, advising on data collection and analysis, and keeping the stated goals and project outcomes at the forefront. During the active years of our training grant, Dr. Kaczmarczyk’s activities centered upon the closed focus group sessions between herself and the NRT graduate students (“trainees”) during our Annual Retreat. In the sessions, trainees provide candid feedback to Dr. Kaczmarczyk on key points of the training program, including (but not limited to): courses, workshops, requirements and expectations, relationship-building, and trainee experiences and challenges. Dr. Kaczmarczyk then shared her findings with NRT leadership along with her recommendations (which are subsequently shared with the Independent Advisory Board and internal Evaluations and Outcomes Committee). She then incorporates her findings into her own annual report, which examines the project’s performance overall. Dr. Kaczmarczyk also attends (or watches the recording of) the bi-annual meetings with the Independent Advisory Board. Her activities/findings have been instrumental in informing and improving the training project each year. I highly recommend Dr. Kaczmarczyk and look forward to opportunities to work with her again.
Engaging Stakeholders for Meaningful Evaluation
Our focus group facilitation approach emphasizes inclusivity, transparency, and trust — creating a setting where participants can safely share insights that inform your strategic planning, and broader program improvement efforts. Focus group findings can be integrated with findings from other data gathering methods such as surveys, interviews, document analysis, and case studies for a broad understanding of project performance. Whether alone, or along with other data, our focus group findings provide you with data driven evidence of impact, supporting stronger strategic planning and decision-making.