Texarkana Area Resident Focus Group Screener
due in two weeks

Our new university president is interested in how people feel about various aspects of our university and about what will be needed when we downward expand.  We know that we cannot be all things to all people; not just any high school student is a potential freshman.  We don't know, however, exactly what kind of target market would have the greatest interest in us and what it is we should be doing to attract that market.  That is, there is some segment or some niche that is our market, but we have to determine the characteristics of that segment and what it needs and wants in a university.

In order to gain insights into these issues, we could conduct exploratory interviews on a sample of people who are in our initial geographic target.  Such interviews could be conducted in a variety of ways, e.g. by a visit to where people in the sample live, by calling on the phone to where they live, or by asking them to come to a research facility for a face-to-face individual interview or focus group session.  There are a number of tradeoffs regarding available resources, reachability, transportation, perceived confidentiality, and such, but we will opt for now to recruit for focus group sessions.  At this point in the process, we are not interested in designing an entire research study, but are only interested in how we would recruit a sample of people to interview.

Write a screener that could be used to recruit parents of high school students who live in the geographic region from which we would recruit our first non-resident (no dorms) freshman class.  Some specific issues in recruiting are as follows:

  • We would like a sample of at least 48 Texarkana-area residents (six focus group sessions of eight people).

  • We want to recruit one extra person per session to make up for possible no-shows (recruit 54).

  • Of the 54 recruits, we would like 40 to be residents in the postal areas of
    • Texarkana, AR (zip code 71854),
    • Texarkana, TX (75501, 75502, 75503, 75504, 75505, 75507),
    • Wake Village, TX (75501),
    • Nash, TX (75569)

  • We would like the remaining 14 recruits to be residents in the postal areas of:
    • Ashdown, AR (71822)
    • Atlanta, TX (75551)
    • Boston, TX (75557)
    • DeKalb, TX (75559)
    • Douglassville, TX (75560)
    • Fouke, AR (71837)
    • Fulton, AR (71838)
    • Garland City, AR (71839)
    • Hooks, TX (75561)
    • Linden, TX (75563)
    • Maud, TX (75567)
    • Mount Pleasant, TX (75455). 
    • New Boston, TX (75570)
    • Redwater, TX (75573)
    • Simms, TX (75574)

  • All recruits must be parents with one child in the household who is between the ages of 15 and 20.  (Recruit only one parent per household.)

  • All recruits must have lived in their particular zip code category (the immediate Texarkana city area or the surrounding area) for two years or more.

  • The recruit would be paid $75 for a one-hour session.  (Each focus group session would run about 45 or 50 minutes.)

A screener should include the following where possible:

  • The study number.
  • The client organization.
  • The client's name, address, phone number, fax number.
  • The cities from which you will be recruiting.
  • The interview session date and time for which you are recruiting.
  • Who you are recruiting.
  • How many you are recruiting.
  • The length of the interview.
  • The topic of the interview: be sure that it sounds interesting to the prospective recruit, but don't provide any more details than are necessary.
  • Directions to the facility for the recruit.

Anything not to be read on the phone should be put in bold and capital letters.

The following examples might be helpful: