The Effects of Bad Recruiting

Did any of you watch the first season of American Inventor?. On my DVR, it was right up there with Lost. I loved watching everyday people tackle real-world problems. Some of the inventions were amazing. And some of them left me wondering "what the (…) was that person thinking?" As a researcher, I couldn’t help but be irritated by something - their display of Focus Groups.

Take Sharon Clemens as an example. Sharon came up with a very simple, yet clever device - a plastic clip to hold the bathroom stall door closed in a public restroom. Now, I don’t personally use the stall that often (one fortunate advantage of being a man - we get to stand up). However, I have on occasion been in the position of need for a public stall. And I have on the occasion been in a stall where the door didn’t lock properly, or at all. One time is too often for me. Now, imagine being a woman and your only option is a stall. It’s a real problem. And I applaud her for solving a real problem.

Any decent researcher knows the importance of finding research participants who meet your target audience. This was my issue with the focus group participants during the American Inventor show. This woman’s target audience was other women. Or other women who use public restrooms. Any idea who was in the focus group session for her product? Mostly men. Their feedback was not promising.

That wasn’t the only one. Remember Francisco Patino, the inventor of the Double Traction Bike? His target audience was teenage kids in lower income neighborhoods. Guess who was in his focus group? Mostly parents. Where were the kids who would be using the bike? Once again, the feedback wasn’t promising.

As a researcher, this type of blatant misunderstanding and improper use of a research method troubles me. Just as I’m glad that Business Week had a recent article on ethnography, I’m also concerned for the posers this will produce who will devalue this method, just like focus groups and in the long-term cause greater harm than good.

In the mean time, if you’re looking for a funny parody on focus groups, check out this Dodge commercial Bill Bulman forwarded to me.