I’m not a big fan of focus groups (when it comes to businesses figuring out what customers want) for a number of reasons.
First, they are unnatural settings with a very high degree of scrutiny, which may distort how people respond. Second, it seems likely that people will tend to say what they think others expect them to say, or what the people organizing the focus group might want them to say. Third, I suspect that one or two vocal participants can sway the responses of the others who are present. Fourth, in general I am more interested in what people do than what they say.
It is hard not to like this focus group, run by Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart, unless of course you were one of the attendees. Advertised as a holiday-shopper focus group, it was really a trick to catch fugitives.
More than 60 eager criminals showed up. The fact that they were being promised $500 to take part in the activity should have been a dead giveaway. When people like my mom are willing to participate for $50, there is no need to pay $500.
The most surprising thing of all is that of the 60-plus fugitives who showed up, only one was carrying marijuana.
and 
. You can also watch it on 
Umm, is that legal?
I don’t understand this story. Criminals were more likely than normal people to want $500 for being in a focus group?
The story has very, very little information too.
I enjoy participating in focus groups and marketing surveys for just that reason: to screw with the results.
Your comment that you’re more interested in what people do than what they say is encapsulated in the IT truism: Users lie.
I don’t quite understand how the police were able to send the fugitives invitations to the focus group, while being unable to locate them in their homes while the arrest warrants were out and take them them into custody in the customary way.
The things you list are all problems of focus groups, but the biggest focus group problem is that the results can never be projected to the entire universe because the sample is both small and not random.
Well, actually, I do know the reason this was done: the police view cost of arresting all those fugitives at their homes as substantially higher than the cost of arresting them at the focus group. It really does surprise me, though, that the police can have the known addresses and locations of all these fugitives — some of whom had warrants out for aggravated battery — and chose not to pursue any of them, even if they posed a considerable threat to the public.
Did they still have to pay them the $500 to avoid false advertising charges?
The original story explains it more. They sent fugitives a offer to join this focus group, along with a scratch-off that *might* let them win $500 if they brought it along with them. Presumably, the fugitives got their mail one way or another, showed up and got a surprise.
This sounds a lot like a Simpsons episode where the Springfield PD sent out “You’ve won a free motorboat” to people with unpaid parking tickets.
Of course, this makes me ask if any of the criminals won the $500 from the scratch off. If not, there’s probably a lawsuit in there…..