New Boston Housing Authority Focus Group Screener
due in two weeks

Our client is interested in peoples' perceptions of public housing and specifically in perceptions of the New Boston Housing Authority (NBHA).  Many people associate "public housing" with gangs, thugs, guns, drugs, crime, and such.  While this bad reputation is deserved in some cities and some places, this perception does not match reality in many places and certainly not NBHA.  NBHA has a lot of long term residents in its total of 230 apartments.  Some have rented with them for 25 years, with many tenants being elderly. 

We are being asked, then, to assist NBHA in gaining an understanding of local perceptions and finding ways to improve peoples' perceptions or to capitalize on good perceptions if that is what it enjoys.  NBHA is especially interested in this issue because it is just now completing renovation of its 40 unit Dogwood Plaza apartments and wants to assure that it attracts people who should be interested in what it has to offer. 

In order to gain insights into peoples' perceptions of NBHA, we could conduct exploratory interviews on a sample of people who live in or near New Boston.  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 people who live in and near New Boston.  Some specific issues in recruiting are as follows:

  • We would like a sample of at least 48 residents who live near New Boston (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 must have:
    • 18 to be residents who live in the 75570 zip code area (New Boston).
    • 18 to be residents who live in the 75559 zip code area (DeKalb).
    • 18 to be mix of residents of the zip code areas 75561, 75503, 75501, 75567, 75574.

    (See ZipMaps.)

  • Of the 54 recruits, we must have:
    • 18 in the age range of 18 through 25.
    • 18 in the age range of 26 through 55.
    • 18 age 56 and older.

  • Of the 54 recruits, we must have:
    • 18 with a household income below $25,000.
    • 18 with a household income between $25,000 and $60,000.
    • 18 with a household income above $60,000.

  • All recruits must be a head of household who is over age 18.  (Recruit only one person per household.)

  • All recruits must have lived in their particular zip code category 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: