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QUALITATIVE RESEARCH
Focus groups can yield valuable insights to help drive marketing and business strategies, but they’re only as good as the participants—and the researchers moderating them. Sociologist and market researcher Robert Kahle discusses how to identify problem behaviors and manage them to create successful outcomes.
BY MOLLY SOAT | STAFF WRITER
msoat@ama.org
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QUALITATIVE RESEARCH
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ocus groups are the most widely used qualitative research tool, according to the Market Research Association—and with good reason, according to experts. They foster fruitful discussion and can provide unique insight into customers’ and potential customers’ needs, wants, thoughts and feelings. But focus groups can be messy. Moderators have to contend with competing personality types or human behaviors, dominant or reticent participants and the dangers of “group think.” Many focus group moderators, executives at qualitative research companies and academics—including several interviewed for this story—are hesitant to acknowledge the potential impacts of human behavior on the focus group process and the resulting insights, but Robert Kahle believes strongly enough in the topic to have written a book on it. Kahle is a sociologist and market researcher, and his book, Dominators, Cynics and Wallflowers: Practical Strategies for Moderating Meaningful Focus Groups, addresses the challenges that social dynamics and human behavior pose in the focus group setting. Kahle cut his teeth in Detroit, working for Automated Marketing Systems as the manager of research and product development for Ford. He has worked as a focus group moderator since 1983. After earning his Ph.D. in
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sociology, Kahle opened his own firm, Lakeside, Mich.based Kahle Research Solutions Inc. in 1994. Early on, he worked with automotive clients including Cadillac and GM as a contractor for Fenton, Mo.-based Maritz Research to hire and train focus group moderators. He spent a decade observing and coaching 20 to 25 moderators, and discovered that the dominators, cynics and wallflowers appear in most focus groups, he says, and without quick identification and moderation techniques, the discussion can go off track. Today, Kahle’s work focuses on training members of the Qualitative Research Consultants Association, the American Sociological Association and the American Evaluation Association, as well as moderating focus groups for clients such as the city of Detroit, the state of Michigan and the University of Notre Dame. He recently spoke with Marketing News about the sociological nature of qualitative research, the problem behaviors that often arise in focus groups and his practical solutions.
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How did you develop the idea for this book? Was it based on your own experiences? Was it conceptualized for academia or on-theground training?
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Research for the book was largely done through observation of other moderators and my own personal self-assessment, and figuring out the most common types that we see and then how you deal with them. The book was largely based on trial and error, and working with others on observation of literally thousands of focus groups. … I was in the unique position of seeing other moderators work, and being able to watch, review and then coach them. That’s when I started seeing these behaviors in the room with the participants and how common they were. The moderators didn’t really know what to do. I developed what I call the ‘typology of problem behaviors in focus groups.’ It includes the 10 personalities you find in focus groups. In sociology, those
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QUALITATIVE RESEARCH
would be called ‘ideal types,’ not because they’re perfect, but rather those are the characteristics that identify that type of behavior in an ideal sense. I really wanted to create a book that wasn’t so academic but was much more practical. Rather than arguing with our critics and saying, ‘No, that group wasn’t misleading because someone dominated!’ I got to a point where I accepted it and said, ‘This is how it is, and now we have to develop the tools and techniques to deal with it.’ There are still a large number of qualitative researchers out there who deny that this is a problem. I know it’s a problem. That’s why I developed the book and the training.
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Talk about why there are so few of these kinds of books out there. Why were you willing to write this book, essentially admitting that the focus group concept is flawed?
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No one had really written a book that dealt with the specific issue of behavior problems in focus groups. There are plenty of books that discuss how to moderate a focus group but none about managing the small group dynamic. … Clients complain that one or two people come in and dominate the group, and it spoils the whole thing. Most of my colleagues would say, ‘No, no, no, that’s not true.’ I would look at these tapes and come to the conclusion that, yes, indeed, it is true. Instead of fighting the negative perception, I accepted their critique and decided to do something about it … so I developed a three-pronged approach. One is early recognition of the problem behavior, two is the prevention of the problem behavior and three is the management if the previous two steps didn’t work. Most moderators miss the cues until it’s too late.
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Go through and break down each of the 10 personality types that you’ve identified as problems in focus groups. According to your book, four are always a problem when they show up and six of the personality types are a problem only some of the time. Break this down for us.
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The four that are always problems are ‘dominators,’ ‘cynics,’ ‘hostiles’ and the ‘intoxicated.’ We never want to label people as being a type, so, more precisely, these are behaviors. In many cases, the ‘dominator’ is a very knowledgeable respondent or participant, so you don’t want to totally excuse them. What you want to do is make sure they don’t contaminate the rest of the group.
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“There are still a large number of qualitative researchers out there who deny that this is a problem. I know it's a problem. That's why I developed the book and the training.”
The dominators are usually the most obvious: They’re long-winded and the first to speak. They often will speak with the tone of the self-appointed expert and they’re dismissive of other participants’ opinions. It’s our responsibility to treat our respondents with respect and to hear everyone’s opinion, but when you have a dominator coming into the room and snickering at what somebody else says, you are not creating a safe environment. It’s incumbent on the moderator to take action to reduce the dominating behavior. One of the ways you can spot them is that they will almost always sit directly opposite the moderator. It happens nine times out of 10. When you ask the group how everyone is doing and you have one person who says, ‘Well, why do you ask?’ you know that person is going to be confrontational. … At the extreme, dominators are very deliberate in their actions. Finger-pointing, tablepounding, smacking their fist into their hand: Those are all cues that you have a dominator on your hands. The dominator is the first and most common type of problem personality. The skill that every moderator needs to have is how to manage the dominator because you’re going to see a dominator almost every night,
QUALITATIVE RESEARCH
in almost every focus group, with varying degrees of problematic behavior. The second is the ‘cynic.’ In short, he thinks that everyone and everything sucks. He sees fault in everything and really enjoys being argumentative. He is similar to the dominator but is a bit more pessimistic. Cynics are not there to dominate the discussion. They just want everyone else to know that they’re right and you’re wrong. They often won’t be as verbal as the dominators, but they like to show nonverbal signs of disagreement when anyone else is talking. Again, it’s our job to understand the respondents’ comments in their own terms, in their own words, and when you have a behavior like this going on in the room, you’ve got to take action or you’re not doing your job. ‘Hostiles’ give themselves away before they even get into the interview room because they’re asking for corrections or some type of solution to their problem with the frontline personnel. They want to know who’s in charge, who they can talk to and whether there’s someone from the company here. They typically become
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Robert Kahle Kahle Research Solutions Inc.
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“The whole notion here is that you want to start with the most gentle correction that you possibly can until you get the behavior that you’re trying to correct. The gentlest way that you can correct the dominator is by simply avoiding eye contact with him, and then you change proximity a little bit. You have to give them a little shoulder. You have to change your body so that if they’re at all sensitive, they’re getting the notion that you don’t want them to be the first person to answer the question. Then you move through a progression of stronger and stronger nonverbals, and then you move to the verbals to try to get to the behavior you want. The whole reason you do this is because if you come off really strongly in the beginning of the group, you shut everybody else down and you don’t create this environment of open, honest discussion. … These techniques should be used when everything else didn’t work. Your early identification didn’t work, your attempts to prevent it didn’t work and you still have problem behaviors going on. Then you use the correction continuum, or forced role-switching, or the in-group dyads or triads where you break them down into groups of two or three and have them talk to each other and then report out. Moderators should also be using written and visual exercises. The ‘talk only’ groups are really passé. When you’ve got a moderator who’s ‘talk only’ and they have no exercises at all, you’re going to see more bad behavior in those situations. You’ve got to have something to keep participants engaged and active.”
KAHLE’S CORRECTION CONTINUUM
PROBLEM BEHAVIOR CORRECTION CONTINUUM
BE INDIRECT
“Now what do the rest of you think?”
VERBAL CORRECTIONS
ENGAGE OTHERS
“I have heard a lot from Dom. How about you, Sally?”
REFERENCE GROUND RULES “Let’s give everyone a chance to respond! Recall the ground rules. Everyone talks and no one dominates.”
USE HUMOR
BE MORE DIRECT
“Let’s save some airspace for everybody else.”
“Hold on a minute, Dom. Let’s listen to others.”
NONVERBAL CORRECTIONS
GENTLE
FIRM
AVOID EYE CONTACT …with dominator. Make eye contact with others.
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USE INDIRECT NONVERBAL Show signs of impatience when dominator is speaking.
USE DIRECT NONVERBAL Hold hand up in stop sign motion when dominator continues talking over others or moderator.
CHANGE PROXIMITY
CHANGE PROXIMITY (AGAIN)
Stand facing only one side of the table, opposite of the dominator.
Stand directly behind the dominator forcing dominator into an awkward position to make eye contact with moderator.
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incompressible, as their anger impedes their ability to speak. You see really extreme body language here. The ‘intoxicateds’ are the easiest to spot because you can usually smell them. The most common drugs we see are alcohol and marijuana, but now we see prescription pills and amphetamines, too. You’ll notice their behavior as they come into the room, and the behavior varies on the type of drug. … Those are the four types that, if they’re in your group, you have to do something because they’re going to be a problem. Note that all of these appear on a continuum and what I’m describing are the extremes.
Q A
Let’s now break down the six personality types that are usually secondary problems.
‘Wallflowers’ are trying to escape any type of conversation with you. They’re trying to blend in. The ‘follower’ agrees with everyone and everything. They shake their heads and never want to be the first one to speak.
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The ‘blatherers,’ or the ramblers, are the folks who go long off-topic. They’re especially eager to please. They want to say anything that you want to hear. I call some of it ‘word salad’: All of the words are there, but they just don’t fit together. Frequently, folks who are socially isolated, whether from a disease or age, are most likely to be your ramblers or your blatherers. … The ‘proselytizer’ is an ideologue and they believe that their position is correct. The term is typically used to describe religious belief, but for Ford versus Chevy, for example, it works. [Laughs.] … It’s not just religious or political, but also in terms of products or services that have very high engagement and where people believe very strongly in it. The consistent thing you see with the proselytizers, as well as the cynics, is the inability to take on the role of the other. They can’t put themselves in someone else’s shoes. One of the things you do here is you force them into the role of the other. You say: ‘You’ve told me that you really hate concept A, but let’s say you had to sell concept A to someone who didn’t want it. What would be the points that you would use to try to communicate
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“You're going to see wallflowers and followers a lot, but they're only problems in that you're not going to get to their nuggets of information because they're not comfortable enough to express them. They don't necessarily contaminate as a dominator or a cynic would, but you do miss out on their insights.”
with them?’ Make them uncomfortable by taking the role of the other and it really allows them to get out of their role of the proselytizer. The ‘co-moderator’ is a very different animal because the co-moderator can be helpful or harmful depending on how they’re acting. You can always spot them because they sit right next to the moderator; they’re there to help you. They like to redirect your probes and they also are known for doing the instant analysis: ‘What all of this means here tonight is’ and so on. Now, there are situations where the co-moderator can be helpful. For example, I’ve had co-moderators who
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are bilingual … and they become an instant translator. Also, if you’re a shrewd and confident enough moderator, they can help the dynamic and really make things run smoothly, as long as they’re not taking you off track. Most frequently, it’s a combination of the two. Confident, experienced moderators let the co-moderators go a little bit before they try to correct them to figure out if they’ll be helpful or harmful. The last one is the ‘joker.’ You typically can spot them. They wear baseball caps and they’re also well-known for having those message T-shirts. They’re going to make fun of everything and everyone, not the least of which is the moderator. … Rookie moderators really need to figure out how to deal with the cynics and the dominators because those are the two behaviors that you’re going to see most frequently that are always problematic. You’re going to see wallflowers and followers a lot, but they’re only problems in that you’re not going to get to their nuggets of information because they’re not comfortable enough to express them. They don’t necessarily contaminate as a dominator or a cynic would, but you do miss out on their insights.
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Talk about early identification. How do you spot these problem personalities, and what are the first steps to mitigating problem behavior from the outset?
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You can identify problem behaviors early on by being sensitive to cues and clues that you see from the recruitment process, from the interactions you have with the participants in the waiting or staging area, and the initial 30 seconds to five minutes when they’re in the room. At that point, if you’re a good moderator and you’ve got your antennae up and you’re watching for all of the cues, you know if you’re going to have significant problem behavior that night or not. Most moderators would say, ‘I didn’t realize that I had a problem until halfway through.’ They miss the early cues. It’s not that they’re bad people or they don’t want to do a good job. Usually, it’s just the opposite. Clients love to overfill the moderator’s guide, so you’ve got two hours slotted for the focus group and the client has four hours’ worth of objectives. You’re trying to jam it all in, so you are oftentimes focused on that or all of the logistical things that can go wrong. … People get so focused on the problems that they forget that they’re collecting data every minute they are on, not just when the folks are in the room. A key to early identification is being well-connected and having trusting relationships with your recruiters. … You have to trust
your suppliers and really develop a relationship with them so they feel comfortable enough to report to you that you’re going to see some behaviors in the room based on what they learned during the recruitment process that may be a problem for you. The next step is prevention. There are a lot of ways to prevent problem behaviors, but the best way is through strong ground rules. There are ground rules to use for each problem personality, so if you’ve got a dominator, you use a line like: ‘Everyone here talks and nobody dominates. Whether you’re an outspoken person or a soft-spoken person, your opinion is equally important for us. If you’re the kind of person who likes to do all of the talking’—wink wink, as you’re looking at the dominator sitting across the table, looking you in the eye—‘I’m going to ask you to pipe down a little bit, and if you’re the kind of person who never contributes’—and you look over to your wallflower who’s slinking in the corner and trying to be invisible in her chair—‘I might try to pull you out and get you to contribute. We want everyone to contribute relatively equally and we want to respect everyone’s opinion equally.’ Use that phrasing up front. If you tell people how you want them to behave and you also model that behavior, you’ll get model behavior in most instances. … All of this is contextual. If you bring me into a focus group as a respondent and we’re talking about my passion, tennis, I’m going to be more outspoken and more domineering than if you bring me in and want to talk about opera or impressionist artists. I don’t know anything about those, so I’m going to be a wallflower. It’s not like you get one of these labels and you are that in every situation. It’s contextual based on the topic and who else is in the room.
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“A lot of what I learn from the work that I do with clients in the traditional face-to-face environment occurs outside of the room itself. Afterwards, in the hall, a guy says to you, ‘I wanted to say this to the whole group, but I never did,’ and he blurts out something that’s the best comment you hear all night.”
a capital ‘T’ is not something I believe in. Truth with a small ‘t,’ based on an individual’s perspective, is something that I think we can get at. It’s not so much about trying to get to some ultimate truth. Rather, it’s trying to understand the perspective and context of the words people use so that you can understand the truth from their perspective—not your client’s and not your own. If we can do that, then we can give our clients some really good stuff. … This is not quantitative research where I can put a graph at the end. It’s relative. People are going to see things from different perspectives. The truth is based on where you sit, where you stand, how you see it from your perspective. Unless you can gather the perspectives across a multitude of angles, you can’t get to any capital ‘T’ truth.
Q
It’s really not about constructing the group; it’s rather about playing the cards that you’re dealt during that session. You’re going to get different types, but as long as they meet the specs, it’s your job to manage the counterproductive behavior so that you can get to their goldmine of insights that are deep inside them. This is why I work so hard with the dominators, cynics and hostiles: It’s not about me not letting them be mad. It’s about me learning to redirect that hostility in a productive way. … It’s the moderator’s job to make sure that that behavior is held in check so that the others who may not be as strong or as comfortable have the opportunity to speak, as well. And keep in mind that the dominators are oftentimes very insightful. They’re smart. You don’t want to kick them out. But there is a segment of the research population who thinks that we should be asking all of these questions about … personality types up front. To me, that’s counter to the spirit of what our profession should be about.
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How do you actually extract the truth from these groups, wading through all of these biases and personalities and clashing opinions?
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Being a sociologist, I believe the notion of truth to be contextual and cultural, so it’s relative. Truth with
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The face-to-face aspect of focus groups has been a crucial part of market research for a long time, but in an age of instantaneous chat transcripts, online surveys and ubiquitous behavior tracking, will focus groups remain relevant? How will focus groups dovetail into qualitative research in the long term?
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The entire qualitative industry is going through incredible disruption, and has been since maybe the mid ’90s when bulletin-board focus groups appeared. … When we work in other environments, you have a different set of problem behaviors or, perhaps, additional problem behaviors, but you also have a different set of tools to manage them, not the least of which is the mute button. … But in an online chat, for example, you lose things—the body language, the informal interaction that takes place in the hallway. A lot of what I learn from the work that I do with clients in the traditional face-to-face environment occurs outside of the room, itself. Afterwards, in the hall, a guy says to you, ‘I wanted to say this to the whole group, but I never did,’ and he blurts out something that’s the best comment you hear all night. You have to be on all the time and a lot of moderators miss that, as well. I don’t think that the traditional face-to-face focus group will ever fully go away, but you’ve got your head in the sand if you’re not aware of and using some of the other techniques now. •org For more on focus groups, visit ama.org/MarketingNews.