WWe provide all the services needed for the successful implementation of a qualitative project, including developing the moderation guide and the recruitment screener, moderating sessions / conducting executive interviews in both English and French, and delivering an insightful research report.

Our experience spans every form of qualitative research, including, but not limited to:

CONVENTIONAL (IN-PERSON) FOCUS GROUPS: Focus groups remain one of the most popular techniques in opinion research. The idea of convening a small group of customers, voters, teens or whatever may be your audience of interest, in the same room and having them openly discuss key dimensions of your product, service or policy is a very powerful proposition. While focus groups can be a tremendous opportunity for insight exploration, it is only by working with experienced qualitative researchers that you can extract the maximum value from this approach. Are you inviting the right types and number of participants in each session? Are you conducting too few (or too many!) groups for a given project? Are you effectively using visual and audio stimuli? What kind of drill-down techniques are in your moderation guide? Should you be doing one-on-one interviews, dyads, or triads instead? Is your moderator up to snuff? Should you even be doing focus groups to get at the answers you need? These are just some of the many quality control questions you should be asking yourself before each focus group project you undertake. You should also be using these types of questions to help you evaluate research firms you have worked with in the past.

Quorus Consulting can be your single point of contact for all your full-service focus group projects. Whether you are considering evaluating a billboard with youth in Toronto or conducting website usability with young parents in Whitehorse, Quorus Consulting is your focus group one-stop shop. We’ll make sure you are using the right methodology, we’ll design your moderation guide, we’ll moderate all your sessions (French and English!) and we’ll deliver an insightful report. Through its proven network of focus group recruitment and facility service providers, Quorus takes care of all aspects of participant recruitment, incentive disbursement, catering, and facility coordination.
Working with Quorus Consulting for your focus groups allows you to focus on what requires your undivided attention above all – let us take care of the rest!

ONLINE FOCUS GROUPS: State-of-the art real-time, multi-modal, online collaborative technology, such as WebEx, iTracks or GoToMeeting, enables Quorus consultants to conduct focus groups and other qualitative research over the Internet. Participants log into a website from the comfort of their own computers and dial into the voice portion of the virtual focus group by telephone on a toll-free voice teleconference bridge. This allows participants to interact both by voice and within the virtual collaborative web environment. Methodologically similar to traditional focus groups, the online format eliminates the cost, time and fatigue of travel for participants and can convene geographically dispersed respondents. Again, through its proven network of focus group recruitment and facility service providers, Quorus takes care of all aspects of participant recruitment and incentive disbursement.

ONE-ON-ONE ELITE INTERVIEWING: Research assignments and program evaluations often require one-on-one interviews with key decision-makers, influencers, customers / end-users or employees. The objective of these interviews is to elicit the opinions of respondents through open-ended questioning and drill-downs. Unless enough are conducted in one project, results from this type of research should not be used for quantitative analysis. As well, the interviewing scripts are more often than not used as guides rather than as rigid questionnaires typically used for surveys. Given their free flowing nature, one-on-one interviews require an experienced researcher asking the questions – one who knows how to make the most out of the limited time the respondent has allowed us to have.

If you are considering one-on-one interviews, Quorus Consulting can make sure your special respondents are speaking with an experienced researcher and given the attention they deserve, whether they are C-suite executives, members of Parliament or consumers dealing with a sensitive issue. We’ll custom-schedule all the interviews, we’ll design your interview guide, we’ll conduct all the interviews, French and English, and we’ll deliver an insightful report. If your team needs to view some of the interviews, we can coordinate a convenient facility with a one-way mirror using our proven network of focus group facility service providers.
For your one-on-one interviews, you’ll get one-on-one service from Quorus Consulting!

BULLETIN BOARDS: Online bulletin boards provide more depth of insight from a longer period of evaluation. They allow respondents more time to mull over questions/implications (moderator guides are designed in this way), and each participant has time to articulate their responses and provide detailed answers. Also, each participant replies to each question and can provide the breadth of response delivered by 15-20 participants (equivalent to that of 15-20 in-depth interviews). This approach allows both an in-depth interview response and also an element of the dynamic provided in traditional focus groups. It combines one-on-one and group approaches using influenced/uninfluenced questions (e.g., option to answer prior to seeing others responses). We recruit participants, design the discussion guide, host and monitor the bulletin board, and deliver an insightful report. We typically use iTracks for this type of research project.

MODERATION SERVICES:

MODERATOR PROFILE Rick Nadeau, MBA, CAIP

Rick Nadeau is one of our leading qualitative researchers. His bilingual capabilities and his many years of experience make him a valued asset to any qualitative assignment. Whether he is managing qualitative research projects as an executive interviewer or a focus group moderator, Rick fully understands the benefits and limitations of this research approach.

Since his first focus group in 1999, he has been involved in countless consultation initiatives involving every type of audience, ranging from standard general population and consumer focus groups to interviews with select audiences like C-suite executives, senior public servants, business owners and operators, and healthcare professionals.

Rick has also developed a number of strategies and techniques for managing challenging projects that involve focus groups or interviews with unique participants in unique settings – from logistically complex assignments like website usability projects with youth in Whitehorse to sensitive topics like understanding the cancer patient’s journey.

You need to do research in English and in French? No problem. More often than not, it makes sense to have one moderator for ALL your English and French sessions – with Quorus, this is an easy requirement to meet. As a testament to our bilingual capabilities, Quorus is involved in a bilingual capacity in nearly all of our assignments with the Canadian Federal Government. Even other market research firms partner with us on an ad hoc basis to balance out their qualitative team and make sure their end clients benefit from a truly bilingual consulting experience.
As well, members of our team can also support your research needs in Spanish!