Focus Group about Cigarette Smoking during Pregnancy - incentive letters

Mary Council
RTI International
Community Health Promotion Research
3040 Cornwallis Road
Research Triangle Park, NC 27709

December 10, 2009
Mary,
Per your request, I have outlined our concerns as they relate to the suggested focus study
recruit among women; specifically those with children and smoked during their
pregnancy or trying to get pregnant.
We recently recruited for two smoker groups among the general population in
Charleston, WV and found the recruit to be extremely difficult. The difficulty hovers
around the stigma created around smoking/tobacco use. Many users feel discriminated
against and find most attempts to contact them or survey them is related to getting them
to stop smoking and thus, they refuse or lie about their usage. I imagine pregnant
women/mothers will add even further sensitivity to the matter. We know they exist as
you do but finding them and gaining their participation is quite difficult. We will need
plenty of time and cooperation during the recruiting phase to hopefully achieve your
needs but based on our experience on the prior recruit, which was even easier than this,
we cannot guarantee success.
Also as we discussed, we were involved in similar focus studies for a government agency
in 2007/2008. The success of the recruit was contingent on the assistance of the local
DHHR supplying leads for recruiting purposes when assistance recipients made their
monthly visits.
With regards to the lowering of the incentive from $75 to $50, I feel this would have a
tremendous impact on the already questionable success of the project. As illustrated, we
are not convinced the study can be recruited solely from the general public and lowering
the one drawing mechanism that exists would not be prudent or fruitful and likely at least
double the recruiting efforts and costs at a minimum. We will not accept the study under
those conditions.

I hope you understand our experience and position in this matter.
Best Regards,
Jay Mace
Vice President
The McMillion Companies

2355 East Camelback Road
Suite 800
Phoenix, AZ 85016
P: 602.366.1100
F: 602.366.1101
Email: mclark@schlesingerassociates.com

To:

Schlesinger
Associates - Phoenix

Mary Council

From: Michael Clark
Date: December 10, 2009
Re: Smoking and Pregnancy

Hello Mary,
I would like to detail for you our requirement for a $75 honorarium for the proposed groups regarding
respondents who would be recruited for your upcoming potential “Smoking & Pregnancy” study.
Firstly, we would be required to pay this honorarium for our respondents due to the time
commitment that the respondents would be agreeing to for this potential project. (1.5 hour groups)
Typically an amount could be lowered in certain circumstances however, these folks are taking time out
of their day to come to our facility and participate for 2 hours at a time. We feel that the $75 amount
offsets this time commitment more readily than a lower amount.
Secondly, should we be required to recruit these respondents at a lower compensatory amount it
may very well impact our recruitment capabilities due to a lack of agreement to participate by the
potential respondents. Again, typically we point to the specifications for the necessity of the
honorarium, and with these specific demographic they will be more difficult to recruit than ordinary
consumer respondents. Were these respondents more stereotypical in nature, then a lower amount
could be warranted, unfortunately this is not possible with the respondents being asked to participate in
these specific research groups.
Finally, when recruitment is begun at a low honoraria amount, regardless of specifications, it takes
longer to fill the recruitment. Simply stated, it takes our company longer to go through our listings of
potential respondents to glean the one’s that would be willing to participate at the lower amount.
Consequently this could tack on at least 1 week or 2 to the recruitment timeline, simply because the
number of potentials needed to be contacted grows exponentially to find the “agree-ors” when begun at
a lower amount.
Please contact me should you have any questions.
Sincerely,

Mike
_______________________________________

Michael Clark | Facility Director
Schlesinger Associates - Phoenix

US Locations: New Jersey • New York • Orlando • Los Angeles • Atlanta • Philadelphia • Chicago • Boston • Dallas • San Francisco • Bala Cynwyd • Phoenix
UK Locations: Central London • Wimbledon

December 10, 2009 

To:

Mary Council RTI International
Community Health Promotion Research

From: Betty Crawford ,Vice President
Project Manger, First In Focus, Inc.
RE:

Focus Group Incentive Needs

The intent of this memo is to explain and stress the need for suggested incentive amount of $75.00 per
recruit for your young female smoker/former/non-smoker focus groups.
First and foremost, the amount of time we would need to find enough respondents who would agree to
participate for that amount would be significantly more than we anticipated when submitting costs to recruit
this project. Our recruiting costs will increase accordingly, because resources needed on our part will
probably be double what we originally anticipated. We also would need at least an additional 10+ days
(now need 3 weeks) to try to recruit this project.
The standard rate for a 90 to 120 minute focus group is $75.00 for our area; the standard rate for a 30 minute
interview or focus group is $50/per person. Also, if we need to go outside our database to recruit
respondents we regularly offer an even higher incentive because the respondents usually don’t trust that we
are legitimate, but a higher than usual incentive will entice them to attend. Our experience has shown that
lower SES groups, there is more suspicion and less reliability to keep a commitment made to us. (We will
definitely need to recruit outside our database for these groups.)
We have found that if we do not offer enough incentive for respondents to make it worth their while, we
have a very large percent of respondents who will promise to be here, but never show up.
I am expecting that some in this particular age group will have commitments to young children, therefore,
needing to find and pay for childcare; some will need to find and pay for transportation; two additional
legitimate reasons to offer at least the standard amount of incentive.
By offering $50 we could not successfully recruit and insure a good show rate to meet your expectation of
seating 8 respondents per group.
Please be assured that by offering the standard amount your chances of having enough respondents actually
show will be much higher.