Students Speak Toolkit > II. The Focus Group Blueprint > A. Design > 10. Make decisions about focus group facilitation.

Make decisions about focus group facilitation.

As your work team begins to be able to envision the focus group topics and questions more clearly, you should begin thinking about facilitation. The first task is to consider the most appropriate sources for facilitators for the focus groups. Below we present our primary recommendations for each school level, along with the rationale behind each recommendation. Here are our overall recommendations:

For elementary school focus groups, designate an adult whom the students know and feel comfortable with, such as a guidance counselor or resource teacher.
For middle school focus groups, train high school students to serve as facilitators.
For high school focus groups, use "outside" facilitators - either students from other high schools in your district or a neighboring district or students from a local college, community college, university, or technical school.
For both middle and high school focus groups, use co-facilitators. As much as possible, make sure the facilitators reflect the participants in the room. For example, if you are conducting a focus group with all male participants, use a pair of male facilitators. If you are conducting a focus group that contains an equal mix of African American and Caucasian female participants, recruit one African American female facilitator and one Caucasian female facilitator.

We recommend that you form pairs of facilitators who differ from each other on factors such as these:

• race/ethnic background
• socioeconomic status
• academic performance level
• level of involvement in extracurricular activities
• social status in the school

Facilitators for elementary school focus groups

Primary Recommendation
Choose an adult - one who is either already trained or available to be trained - whom the students know and feel comfortable with to facilitate the sessions. The most likely sources of facilitators for these groups are guidance counselors or resource teachers. In Jessamine County, four guidance counselors and one resource teacher facilitated the elementary sessions with great skill and ease.

Alternative
You may be able to bring in skilled adults from the community to facilitate the sessions, provided you prepare them adequately. This kind of approach may be worthwhile if you are concerned about neutrality and student confidentiality or if you have a particularly sensitive research topic. We have not had any experience with using outside adult facilitators at the elementary school level, but we would be interested in the results.

Facilitators for middle school focus groups

Primary Recommendation
Engage students from local high schools to serve as facilitators. Form pairs of facilitators for each focus group; to the greatest extent possible, make sure that the facilitators reflect the characteristics of the student participants. If you are planning to conduct groups that are homogeneous by gender (which we again underscore as our recommendation for middle and high school students), identify two female student facilitators for each female focus group and two male student facilitators for each male focus group. Refer to the box above for a list of other factors to consider when pairing facilitators. If time and schedules permit, a pair of students can facilitate more than one group. (Remembers that if you are relying on the same pairs of student facilitators to conduct all the groups, you should vary the days and times of the groups so that the students don't miss the same class several times in one week.) It's a good idea to designate one or two alternates for each group, just in case one of your facilitators becomes ill or is otherwise unable to run the group.

"You have to have student facilitators. Otherwise, the participants think, 'Let's tell 'em what they want to hear' – or, 'Let's irritate them!'"

High School Educator,
Fayette County

Advantages of using high school student facilitators

At the middle school age, students tend to be less comfortable talking frankly with adults and more guarded in their responses. High school facilitators can provide the authority necessary to keep a group of middle school students on task and under control and also serve as a youthful presence with which the younger students feel comfortable.
Using students from local high schools as facilitators helps to ensure neutrality and confidentiality, since presumably the facilitators are less likely to know the participants.
Training high school students to serve as facilitators will develop the capacity of students in your district to conduct their own qualitative research and to be effective facilitators.

Disadvantages of using high school student facilitators

Coordinating the logistics of the focus groups is more difficult when you are using outside facilitators. These logistics include transporting student facilitators to another school site, matching schedules, and giving facilitators a chance to practice and become familiar with the questions.
Student members of the work team may feel less ownership in the process since they will not be facilitating the groups, while outside facilitators may have less stake in the outcome.

High school student facilitators for middle school groups can be drawn from grades 10 through 12, though any 10th grade facilitator should be matched with an older student counterpart.

In Jessamine County, the Beta Club advisor in each high school recruited club members to serve as facilitators. Roberts & Kay, Inc. trained all of the recruited students and then randomly chose two pairs of students (one male and one female) to serve as the facilitators for the middle school focus groups. See the box below for possible sources of high school student facilitators.

Possible Sources of High School Student Facilitators

Members of FFA or other student leadership development groups
Beta Club or National Honor Society members
Student Government officers
Returned Governor's Scholars
Students in communication classes
Any other members of an extracurricular club looking for a hands-on project
Any students with leadership skills or leadership potential

Alternative
Train middle school students (8th graders) from your own school to serve as facilitators. Form pairs of facilitators for each group; to the greatest extent possible, make sure that the facilitators reflect the characteristics of the student participants. Identify two female student facilitators for each female focus group and two male student facilitators for each male focus group. If time and schedules permit, a pair of students can facilitate more than one group. You could either train the students who are serving on the work team or recruit other students with potential facilitation skills. You should designate one or two alternates for each group, just in case one of the facilitators becomes ill or is otherwise unable to run the group.

Advantages of using "in-house" middle school student facilitators

Students on the work team may have more ownership of the focus group process if they have the added responsibility of facilitating the groups, since they will be able to have a direct impact on the outcome. In addition, "in-house" facilitators will have more familiarity with the research and interview questions, since they probably helped frame them.
Middle school student researchers will gain additional communication and facilitation skills.
It is easier to manage the logistics of facilitation if you use "in-house" facilitators (i.e. easier to work around facilitators' schedules, no need for transportation, etc.).
"In-house" facilitators are easier to supervise.

Disadvantages of using "in-house" middle school student facilitators

Middle school students require more training and practice time.
Middle school students may have more difficulty keeping a group of their peers on task and under control.
Middle school students who are facilitating a group of their peers may have less capacity for neutrality, since they will probably know many of the student participants and may have preconceived notions or biases. Similarly, the student participants may have their own notions about the facilitators and their ability to maintain neutrality and confidentiality.
Middle school students may or may not be able to address impression management challenges. While "in-house" student facilitators may be more aware than outside facilitators of the social divisions that are present in the room, they may have difficulty overcoming these challenges, especially since the facilitators themselves are likely to be perceived as belonging to one or more social groups.

In 2000, RKI worked with 8th grade students (two males and two females; two African American students and two Caucasian students) at one Fayette County middle school to prepare them to serve as facilitators. This effort required quite a bit more training and practice than is typically involved with older students, but it appeared to have been mostly successful. The students greatly appreciated the opportunity to gain new skills and demonstrated a high level of professionalism when running the focus groups. We say more about the work team's efforts to prepare the student facilitators in Appendix F.

We think it is still too early to know for certain if training middle school students to serve as facilitators is a viable approach, but we present it here as an alternative and look forward to hearing about other schools' experiences with it.

Facilitators for high school focus groups

Primary Recommendation
Use "outside" facilitators, either students from other high schools in your district or a neighboring district or students from a local college, university, community college, or technical school. Form pairs of facilitators for each group; to the extent possible, make sure that the facilitators reflect the characteristics of the student participants. Identify two female student facilitators for each female focus group and two male student facilitators for each male focus group. If time and schedules permit, a team of students can facilitate more than one group. It's a good idea to designate one or two alternates for each group, just in case one of the facilitators becomes ill or is otherwise unable to run the group.

Sources for "outside" facilitators

You can bring in student facilitators from other district high schools, if students from the different high schools in the district do not know each other well. If the amount of overlap between county high schools is so great as to affect the neutrality of student facilitators, you will need to find other sources. For example, in Jessamine County we discovered that not enough time had passed since the creation of a second county high school and subsequent transfer of students to provide for neutral facilitators. So, we looked for students from outside the district.
You can recruit facilitators from a neighboring district. We anticipate that as more districts implement focus group inquiry, and as more educators engage students in accomplishing this and other types of qualitative research as part of the curriculum, more students will have these skills and will be willing and eager to use them in a sort of skills exchange.
You can use students from a nearby college, university, technical school, or community college. This can be an excellent solution. This is the option the Jessamine County work team selected. We located some college students who had some previous facilitation experience, and we trained one college student ourselves to serve as a facilitator for the high school groups. We provided a lot of support and guidance in advance of the sessions to all the college student facilitators and we paid them for their time and expenses.

Advantages of using "outside" student facilitators

It is critically important for focus group facilitators to be neutral at all times during the session. Facilitators must be able to create a climate of warmth and openness that encourages students to talk about the issues on the table. Successful facilitators therefore must behave as if they have no preset notions about participants. This is often easier when the student facilitators do not know the participants in the group, or at least do not know them well.
Student participants may feel more comfortable with an outside facilitator.
Facilitator neutrality and integrity require that facilitators do not breach the confidence of the group by talking after the groups about the specific people and views they encountered there. Using outside facilitators provides a significant boost to participant confidentiality.
Using outside facilitators is a more professional approach and may lend more credibility to the results of your focus groups.

Disadvantages of using "outside" student facilitators

Coordinating the logistics of the focus groups is more difficult when you are using outside facilitators. These logistics include transporting student facilitators to another school site, matching schedules, and giving facilitators a chance to practice and become familiar with the questions.
Student members of the work team may feel less ownership in the process since they will not be facilitating the groups, while outside facilitators may have less stake in the outcome overall.
If you are using college students as facilitators, you will probably need to provide them with an incentive, typically money.

Many Fayette County educators emphasized that almost any student could serve as a facilitator, with the proper training. They recommended that work teams "spread the wealth" or recognition by considering students who may not be the most obvious leaders to serve as facilitators. Educators at one Fayette County high school said they looked for students who were:

team players
flexible, easygoing
high performers
self-motivated
confident
respected by their peers
reflective of the diversity of the school
well-rounded
from a supportive home environment

Alternative
Train students from your own high school to serve as "in-house" facilitators for the focus groups. The same recommendations about forming pairs of facilitators for each group still apply. You may either train the student members of your work team or recruit additional students to serve as facilitators. You should designate one or two alternates for each group, just in case one of your facilitators becomes ill or is otherwise unable to run the group. See the box above for ideas on desirable qualities in student facilitators or refer back to our ideas on potential sources for facilitators above.

Advantages of using "in-house" high school student facilitators

Students on the work team may have more ownership of the process if they have the added responsibility of facilitating the groups, since they will be able to have a direct impact on the outcome. In addition, "in-house" facilitators will have more familiarity with the research and interview questions, since they probably helped frame them.
Student researchers will gain additional communication and facilitation skills.
It is easier to manage the logistics of facilitation if you use "in-house" facilitators (i.e. easier to work around facilitators' schedules, no need for transportation, etc.).

Disadvantages of using "in-house" high school student facilitators

High school students who are facilitating a group of their peers may have less capacity for neutrality, since they will probably know many of the student participants and may have preconceived notions or biases. Similarly, the student participants may have their own notions about the facilitators and their ability to maintain neutrality and confidentiality.
Students may or may not be able to address impression management challenges. While "in-house" student facilitators may be more aware than outside facilitators of the social divisions that are present in the room, they may have difficulty overcoming this challenge, especially if they are perceived as belonging to one or more of the groups.

Under some circumstances you may train more facilitators than you can use in a single set of focus groups. If you end up with more trained facilitators than opportunities to use them, you can simply select the facilitators for the focus groups by lot (drawing names or numbers). On the plus side, choosing facilitators by lot is a fair and straightforward method. On the minus side, "leaving it to fate" may not result in the most skilled facilitators, nor will it give you the opportunity to strategically match students to serve as co-facilitators.

In 2000, four high schools in Fayette County trained the student members of their work teams to facilitate groups in their own schools. A pair of female students - typically one African American and one Caucasian - facilitated the female focus groups, while a pair of male students - typically one African American and one Caucasian - facilitated the male focus groups. Educators at the high schools expressed a high level of satisfaction with their student facilitators and the level of professionalism they displayed.

Your work team should carefully consider the advantages and disadvantages - particularly those regarding neutrality - to each approach to facilitation and make a decision that is the best fit for you.

Next: Plan facilitator training.