Category: Professional Development

Our current CCE Program Development Leadership Cohort (PDLC) has been thinking about strategies for assessing needs.  While many of us are familiar with launching a survey or looking at service statistics to understand interests in programs, not everyone has had the opportunity to run a focus group.  This topic was of high interest to our cohort.  Why use a focus group?  And what are some strategies for running one?

Focus groups can be a powerful tool to help you understand community needs, refine ideas, and improve outcomes. Whether you’re exploring youth development, agriculture, climate resiliency, or nutrition education, a well-run focus group can give you valuable insight to guide your next steps – and develop a relationship with those who show up to share.  I like to use focus groups as an extension needs assessment or evaluation method because it offers an opportunity to listen deeply to people, and it uses a social environment that can help conversation to be more generative.

Here’s a step-by-step guide intended to help take some of the mystery out of running a focus group:

1.  Define the Purpose. Start with a clear goal. What do you want to learn? Examples might include testing ideas for a new initiative, exploring community concerns, evaluating participant experiences. Keep your purpose focused and align your questions with that purpose.
2.  Identify and Recruit Participants.  Aim for 6–10 participants with diverse perspectives relevant to your topic.

Consider:

• • Program participants (past or potential)
  • Community partners
  • Stakeholders (e.g., teachers, farmers, volunteers)

Use email, phone calls, flyers, or existing networks to invite participants. Be clear about time commitment and why their voice matters.   Share your purpose. Have individuals register so that you can remind them and thank them.

3.  Develop Guiding Questions. Prepare 5–7 open-ended questions to guide the discussion. These should:

• • Prompt stories and experiences (“Tell us about…”)
  • Avoid yes/no answers
  • Start broad, then narrow in
  • Have back up questions in case there is silence.

Questions will relate to your Focus Group purpose – here are a couple of samples – “What types of support do you need to participate fully in our program?”
“How has this program impacted your daily life?”

4.  Logistics Plan. Choose a comfortable and accessible location—or host it online via Zoom.

Plan for:

• • • 30-60 minutes of discussion
    • Include a neutral facilitator (conversations should be lukewarm and not emotional…so at times, that means that we ask someone else to moderate/facilitate)
    • A notetaker or recorder (with permission of participants)

Offer refreshments or a small incentive, if possible, send reminders before the session, and thank you afterwards.

5.  Facilitate Conversation. Set a welcoming tone. Begin with introductions and ground rules:

• • Respect all voices
  • Listen actively
  • Confidentiality matters

Use your guiding questions but stay flexible. Let conversation flow naturally while ensuring all voices are heard.  Avoid dominating the discussion yourself (see note above about including a neutral facilitator).

6.  Analyze and Apply What You Learn.

After the session:

• • Review notes and recordings
  • Look for themes and key insights
  • Summarize takeaways in plain language

Use what you learn to refine your program design, identify gaps, and support grant proposals or reports.

7.  Share Back. This one is important and often forgotten (amongst all the other priorities—I get it). Participants appreciate knowing their time matters. Share a summary of findings and how their feedback will be used. This builds trust and encourages future engagement.

Focus groups aren’t just about collecting data but about listening deeply and building relationships. Done well, they strengthen programs and make them more responsive to real needs in our communities.

Here are a few resources for further information:

• Staff Bulletin – Assessing Needs for Program Development
• Staff Bulletin – Focus Groups
• Open Journal of Extension, Select “Search” and plug in Focus Groups – there is an array of articles on different topics.
  • Example: Participatory Evaluation and Needs Assessment Tools for Cooperative Extension in a Virtual Environment – Karen A. Vines, Virginia Tech

If you’d like tools or a sample focus group plan, contact me – Celeste Carmichael, cjc17@cornell.edu. 

Let’s keep learning, together 😊

This spring the State 4-H Office and CCE Admin Organizational Development Unit partnered to pilot “The 4-H Thriving Vision Project”, a cohort initiative aiming to elevate the reach and impact of extension programs by leveraging the insights and perspectives of an Extension Program Advisory Committee (PAC) and building understanding about how the 4-H Thriving Model can help set the tone for 4-H work.

The five month cohort project intended to build understanding of Extension PACs, considering how the committees can identify gaps in participation, suggest improvements, and explore new audience opportunities. The involvement of external stakeholders, such as potential program participants not currently engaged, was explored as a method that could be particularly valuable. These “fresh eyes” can reveal opportunities that may be overlooked by those closely affiliated with the program.

Ten counties participated.  An initial survey of participants indicated that staff were most interested in the following:

• Update the advisory board and set new goals for 4-H.
• Improve connections and interactions with advisory committee members.
• Learn from other counties about how they meet community needs.
• Add more advisory members and get their feedback and suggestions.
• Find ways to involve youth, volunteers, and other community members in addressing local issues.
• Respond effectively to community needs and build confidence in CCE – 4-H as a partner.
• Support the growth of the committee and staff.
• Find ways to connect with Cornell Campus.

To get at these issues, the cohort explored topics through monthly meetings where the agenda included content presentations and group activities.  Resources and content shared was also offered in an online course that featured introductory material to the 4-H Thriving Model and the Program Advisory Committee Handbook.

Topics covered in the meetings and course from January to May included:

• Exploring Youth Thriving – designed to create awareness and familiarity with the mission, vision and values of the 4-H youth development and our positive youth development framework (The 4-H Thriving Model)
• Snapshot of Today – an exploration of available data (collected through the local Plans of Work and data collection) to understand where your program is currently.
• Opportunity for All – Building on teams learned from their data and considering how Associations can contributing to closing the opportunity gap for youth.
• A Vision for Tomorrow – applying info learned as a process of creating a strategic vision for the county 4-H program. The process and supporting tools allow counties to create a vision statement that describes the ideal future for 4-H in your County (5-7 years from now) and identify priority focus areas for moving the process ahead.
• Charting your Course – implementation plan – this session was all about writing strategies to get from the goals to results.

The pilot was offered to help county staff to effectively harness the power of diverse perspectives, driving the extension programs towards greater reach and impact.

As with any pilot, we learned a few things in the implementation of this effort.  In the beginning, the thought was to open the cohort to volunteers serving on Advisory committees as well as staff.  What we learned is that with so much staff turnover, there are many iterations of PACs across the state, and different understandings and expectations of staff members.  So staff plus volunteers in the same space didn’t always feel congruent.  While some counties might be able to apply the process to staff and volunteers together in a PAC setting, not all were ready to do that.  Additionally, there were some that came to learn more about the 4-H Thriving Model, and others that were there to learn about enriching their PAC.

That said, participating staff indicated that they appreciated the time together to learn collectively and collaboratively.  They gained tools and skills that could be helpful, and noted that the experience was especially helpful for new 4-H staff who were still learning about the concept of “thriving” and how 4-H can help youth to build confidence and competence in a way that helps them thrive.

The next steps are to optimize the online content for use by staff independently and for professional development trainings.  It was suggested that parallel printable content could also strengthen the utility of the resources, particularly for audiences not likely to take the online course.  There is also an interest in generalizing the content with specific audience resources to be useful for staff beyond 4-H Youth Development staff.

Interested in learning more?  Have suggestions or questions?  Please do contact cce-orgdev@cornell.edu.