The Wilder Nonprofit Field Guide to Conducting Successful Focus Groups [Paperback]

Judith Sharken Simon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 15, 1999

Collect valuable information—without a lot of money or special expertise. Using little more than staff or volunteer time and the cost of refreshments, you'll get essential opinions and feedback to help you check out your assumptions, do better strategic planning, improve services, and more.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Successful nonprofit leaders don't guess about what their constituents think or need—they ask them. One of the most effective ways to ask is through focus groups.

The Wilder Nonprofit Field Guide to Conducting Successful Focus Groups shows you how to collect valuable information without a lot of money or special expertise. Using this proven technique, you'll get essential opinions and feedback to help you check out your assumptions, do better strategic planning, improve services or products, build goodwill, and more.

Practical and easy to use Conducting Successful Focus Groups gives you the practical guidance to do focus groups using little more than staff or volunteer time and the cost of refreshments. In ten easy-to-follow steps, you'll learn how to plan and conduct focus groups and, most importantly, how to put the results into action:

1. Create a focused purpose statement 2. Set up a realistic timeline 3. Decide who and how many participants to invite 4. Generate questions that'll get the information you need 5. Write a focus group script 6. Choose a facilitator 7. Find a location that puts people at ease 8. Run the focus group 9. Put the results into action

Each step is followed by a task statement that sums up what you need to do before moving on. Examples, worksheets, answers to frequently asked questions, and an annotated bibliography make the job even easier.

People feel flattered when you ask for their opinions—in fact, most love to tell you what they think. With Conducting Successful Focus Groups, you'll have the tools to use focus groups effectively and make better-informed plans.

About the Author

Judith Sharken Simon has a master's degree in organization development (with a focus on organizational life cycles) from the University of Minnesota and a bachelor's degree in employee relations from Michigan State University. She has lead numerous data-gathering efforts involving focus groups, interview, and surveys. She also trains on the subjects of focus groups and life cycles.

Product Details

• Paperback: 80 pages
• Publisher: Fieldstone Alliance (January 15, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0940069199
• ISBN-13: 978-0940069190
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 8.1 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,053,748 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great For The First Timer, July 20, 2006

By 

madhatter "madhatterlg" (Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Wilder Nonprofit Field Guide to Conducting Successful Focus Groups (Paperback)

If you don't have a graduate level training in research, but still want the benefits of having evaluation info from focus groups, then this book will help.

I've long been a big fan of the workbooks from the Wilder Foundation, and have utilized the Marketing, Collaboration and Team Building workbooks. This one, like other Wilder workbooks, is easy to follow and written in lay language so almost any staff member can quickly comprehend how to facilitate a focus group.

It helped me greatly to do an informal evalaution of my program.


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