Today was the first day of Focus Group 3, and this group was exceptional! We sent out emails with guidelines on how to register and got a good response. Just a handful needed help on a few things, like they had given up because the system wasn’t accepting their registration entries. When we called them, we explained that the email and password need to be re-entered to confirm their entry. So we encouraged them to enter it the same way as they had done earlier.
We sent out a message yesterday evening, telling the participants we will start the discussion the next day. Unlike in the previous discussions, we were already busy this first morning of the Focus Group. People quickly called in with inquiries if they got stuck. Some inquiries included: failing to post due to a network problem, failing to log in because they forgot the password, and calling to confirm if their posts were being seen. All this communication was a sign of the enthusiasm among the participants. When one participant failed to log in, she called me and said, “Please help me log in because I don’t want to miss out on this.” For those who had not yet contributed, they kept their word to log on after we called them.
The overall turnout on the discussion boards so farwas good, consistent, and diligent and with more detailed posts. However, we are not yet sure whether this turnout is due to holding the focus group over a weekend or whether it’s due to girls being more engaged with the activity? Because the boys in Focus Groups 1 and 2 would tell us they would log on but then never show up. Maybe it’s a sexuality experience “trait” for males, as the sexually inexperienced males responded more compared to the former! Well, all these factors remain a mystery.