Online Focus Group Recruitment with Olivia

Qualitative research lives or dies by who is in the room. A single misrecruited participant can derail a discussion, and an empty chair means lost insight. Olivia gives you the tools to compose balanced groups, fill them on schedule, and manage the operational details so moderators can walk into every session prepared.

Designing Your Groups

Focus group projects often involve multiple discussion topics running across several days with different group formats. Olivia maps this structure with two core concepts:

Modes for group formats: Create a mode for each type of session. A standard 90-minute focus group, a 60-minute mini-group, a 45-minute triad, or a 2-hour extended session can each be its own mode with its own duration. The duration is automatically included in PDF invitations so participants know exactly what to expect.
Products for discussion topics or stimuli: Each concept, brand, campaign, or stimulus being evaluated becomes a product. If your study compares three advertising concepts across two audience segments, you create those concepts as products and track recruitment independently for each one.

This separation means you can run a diverse set of groups within a single project: evening focus groups for working professionals and daytime mini-groups for retirees, each focused on different products, all managed from one dashboard.

Composing Balanced Groups with Quotas

Group composition is everything in qualitative research. Olivia's three-tier quota system helps you hit the right mix:

Target quota: The number of participants you actually need seated in a session. If your moderator needs 8 participants per group, that is your target.
Total quota: The target plus an over-recruitment buffer. Focus groups typically see 10-20% no-show rates, so setting a total of 10 when your target is 8 gives you a comfortable margin.
Open quota: Counts down automatically with each booking. When it hits zero, recruiters can no longer book for that product-mode combination, preventing overbooking.

Quotas are set per product and per mode. This means you can have different targets for different concepts or audience segments and track each one independently.

Screening for Group Fit

Not every willing participant belongs in a focus group. You need people who match your demographic criteria and can contribute meaningfully to a discussion. Olivia supports two question types for screening:

Single choice questions for hard criteria: age bracket, gender, household income, product usage frequency, or brand awareness. Predefined answers make it easy for recruiters to categorize respondents consistently.
Open text questions for softer criteria: occupation, reasons for brand preference, or a brief description of relevant experience.

Mark critical screening questions as required so recruiters cannot save a respondent profile without answering them. This prevents incomplete records from slipping through and ensures every participant has been properly vetted before their session.

Questions can be reordered to match your screening flow and exported to a JSON file for reuse in future projects. If you run quarterly brand tracking groups, you only build your screener once.

Building the Session Schedule

Each focus group session is represented by a set of time slots. A group of 10 slots at the same date and time with the name "Group A - Young Professionals" makes it immediately clear to recruiters what they are filling.

Two methods for creating slots give you flexibility:

Form-based creation for groups with specific requirements. Select the mode, set the date and time, give the group a name, choose how many slots to create, and restrict to specific products if needed. Creating 10 slots for "Focus Group 2 - Brand Loyalists" limited to "Concept B" takes seconds.
Excel import for projects with many groups. Download the project-specific template, enter your full schedule, and upload. This is particularly useful when you have dozens of groups across multiple days and locations.

Product restrictions on slots are key for focus group projects. If Group A should only contain participants evaluating Concept A, restricting those slots to that product means recruiters will never accidentally book a Concept B participant into the wrong group.

Booking Participants Quickly

Recruiters follow a streamlined three-step flow: select the product (discussion topic), pick an available slot (group session), and enter the participant's name. The booking is complete in moments.

After booking, the recruiter can immediately add contact details, demographic information, and screening answers on the respondent detail page. A respondent status system tracks where each participant stands:

Default: Just booked, no confirmation yet.
Confirmed (Self) or Confirmed (Request): The participant has confirmed attendance, either proactively or after a reminder call.
Request Change: The participant wants a different session time.
Cancelled: The participant has dropped out.

These statuses are color-coded on the dashboard, yellow for change requests, green for confirmed, red for cancelled, so you can scan hundreds of bookings and instantly spot issues. If a participant drops out and you need to free the slot for a replacement, an administrator can delete the respondent record, which resets the slot to open status and makes it available for a new booking.

Keeping the Recruiting Team Aligned

Focus group recruitment often involves multiple recruiters working simultaneously, sometimes across different regions or agencies. Olivia handles this in two ways:

Concurrent booking with slot locking: When a recruiter selects a slot, it is temporarily held using database-level locks. No other recruiter can take the same slot. If the hold expires without a completed booking, the slot is released. This eliminates double-booking entirely, even with a large team.
Project messages: Administrators can post a rich-text notice that appears at the top of the booking page. When screening criteria change mid-project, a group fills up faster than expected, or a session is rescheduled, every recruiter sees the update before their next booking.

Personalized PDF Invitations

Once a participant is booked and confirmed, generate a professional PDF invitation from a fully customizable template. The rich text editor lets you format the letter with headings, lists, bold and italic text, and your company logo.

Dynamic placeholders pull in each participant's details automatically:

{{respondent}} and {{salutation}} for personalized greetings
{{product}} for the discussion topic or group name
{{appointment}} and {{duration}} for session logistics
{{QRCode}} for a scannable code used at check-in
Any screening question with a short version, such as {{Incentive}}, to include participant-specific values like honorarium amounts

Templates can be exported and imported between projects, so your standard focus group invitation letter is ready for every new study.

Day-of-Session Operations

On session days, Olivia's Study Live dashboard gives you a real-time view of who is expected, who has arrived, and who is missing:

Upcoming appointments table: Shows participants arriving within your chosen time window (15 minutes to 2 hours). Rows turn red when a participant is late and yellow when their session starts within 15 minutes, so you can prioritize follow-up calls or activate backup participants.
Checked-in table: Shows everyone who has arrived but not yet been checked out, with elapsed time since check-in.
QR code check-in: Participants show the QR code from their PDF invitation and are checked in instantly via camera scan. This keeps reception queues short and professional.
No-show marking: When a participant does not appear, mark them as a no-show directly from the dashboard. Their slot status updates immediately and the clinic statistics reflect the change.
Labels: Assign an ID or label at check-in (e.g., "R-014") for tracking participants through the facility or matching them to recording equipment.

The dashboard auto-refreshes every 30 seconds, so you always have a current picture without manual reloading.

Monitoring Recruitment and Session Progress

Olivia's statistics give you visibility at every stage:

Recruiting status: A table showing target, gross, current, and open counts per product and mode. If one discussion topic is falling behind while another is oversubscribed, you see it immediately and can redirect effort.
Clinic status: Once sessions begin, this view shows show, no-show, and screened-out counts per product with a chance percentage. If a product has 10 recruited participants, 3 have shown up, 1 was a no-show, and 6 are still open, the chance percentage tells you the likelihood of hitting your target based on remaining appointments.
Recruitment timeline: A chart of bookings over time grouped by product. Useful for identifying when recruitment momentum dropped and correlating it with external factors.
Mode mix over time: Shows how bookings are distributed across group formats, helping you spot if one mode is consistently harder to fill.
Recruiter throughput and leaderboard: Bookings per recruiter with show-rate trends. Useful for identifying top performers and recruiters whose participants tend to no-show.
Target forecast: Based on recent booking pace, this projects when each product will reach its target, so you can decide whether to extend recruiting or add resources.

Exporting Data for Moderator Prep and Reporting

At any point, export all booking data to a styled Excel file. The export includes every respondent's name, contact details, screening answers, appointment time, slot status, check-in and check-out timestamps with calculated duration, recruiter name, and label.

This serves two purposes. Before sessions, moderators can review participant profiles and tailor their discussion guides. After the project, the export provides a complete attendance record for client reporting and incentive reconciliation.

Admins see all data; recruiters see only their own bookings with all required questions answered.

Olivia removes the operational burden from focus group recruitment so your team can concentrate on what matters: finding the right people and preparing for productive conversations. From initial screening through session-day check-in to final reporting, every step is tracked in one system with real-time data visible to everyone who needs it.