It's not online chat, and it's not instant messaging...
Here's a quick overview of what a Bulletin Board Focus Group is, and links to a couple of the better known facilities that are available for rent on a subscription basis.
- Unlike chat, it's asynchronous. Not unlike getting a Yahoo Group e-mail digest, or reading comments on a blog. Respondents can log in any time of the day over the period the discussion is live
- You do still have to recruit, and this is about the same difficulty as recruiting for face-to-face groups. There appears to be no cost saving on recruitment or incentives
- Questions can be programmed to go live at specific times. Most facilities let you set up multiple pages, with multiple questions on a page. To participate, respondents simply click a "respond" button or link, and their post is below and indented from the question. Respondents can also respond to each other's posts
- Applications have various features. Often a whiteboard permits posting of graphics, such as advertising or packaging concepts. The whiteboard may also permit showing a live web site that can be navigated. Alternatively, you can put in a pop-up window to a web site
- Some facilities permit the moderator to "mask" a question. Respondents can only see the other responses to a masked question once they have provided their own answer
- Clients may be able to lurk in the discussion without being seen by other participants. They may also be able to make secret posts that only the moderator can see
- The set-up for managing respondent and client log-on IDs varies widely in terms of ease of use for the researcher, but improvements are happening at a rapid clip as the method obtains wider adoption
Here are links to the application software I've heard about or seen. Feel free to add more references in your comments.
FAQ's for researchers from Fall 2002 http://www.qrca.org/pubs/onlinetaskforceFAQs.pdf
