Focus Group Manual - Public Behaviour in Public Spaces

A manual developed to train community members to run consultations.

This manual was developed by a local Social Norms Committee in the US and was provided to communitybuilders.nsw in response to a posting made to the discussion forum seeking ideas on starting a campaign which targets public behaviour in public space.

http://www.communitybuilders.nsw.gov.au/forum/read.php?f=3&i=2063&t=2063

To quote James Wiegel, one of the committee involved in developing the manual:

'I  was on a social norms committee with the city next door and we came up with a focus group approach that involved some testing as our small committee to develop a significant and enjoyable input session around identifying behaviors of concern in town and things we'd like to see more of, then inventing a poster or television spot to highlight the behavior. Finally, sharing the groups ideas around the room.

For the first test, we invited a bunch of facilitators and meeting leaders from the community and did it with them -- about 30 people showed up. They had a good and creative time with it, then we gave them each the "manual" for the event and challenged them to use it wherever they could and send in the results as input into a public campaign. Within a few weeks, a couple of hundred people had participated, and we not only had good input for the campaign, the conversation was already started.'

For further information

Contact	:	James Wiegel,Senior Associate, The Institute of Cultural Affairs
Address	:	4220 North 25th Street, Phoenix, Arizona 85016
Email	:	jwiegel@ica-usa.org