How can you collect deep insights from training participants (and others) to support your surveys or other training evaluation data? Try focus groups! Focus groups offer the opportunity to go deeper and add detail and variety to a dataset – much more than would be obtainable with surveys alone. A focus group is essentially a group interview or small group discussion during which a moderator asks questions in an interactive group setting where participants are encouraged to talk with each other as well as with the moderator. They offer a great way to gather in-depth information about participants’ thoughts, feelings, experiences or opinions on a specific topic.

In this session, attendees will learn:

• How to set up and prepare for focus groups and what to expect before, during and after focus group sessions. 
• How to invite and encourage focus group participants to share their stories.
• How focus groups can be used to both develop surveys and to corroborate survey data

 

In partnership with

Sheila B. Robinson, Ed.D., of Custom Professional Learning, LLC, is a speaker, educator, and consultant with a passion for the science of teaching and learning. She helps coaches, consultants, and business owners create their own high-quality workshops and courses.

Through her other talks and workshops Sheila teaches people about asking good questions, learning strategies, course creation, audience engagement, program evaluation, survey design, data visualization, and presentation design.

Sheila is author of Designing Quality Survey Questions, 2^nd Ed., a text focused on a respondent-centered and research-based survey design process that focuses on how we ask questions of our respondents, and Professional Development Program Evaluation for the Win: How to Sleep Well at Night Knowing Your Professional Learning Is Effective, a free eBook on training program evaluation.

Sheila is a Certified Presentation Expert (CPE)™ and Past President of the Presentation Guild.