How to run safe and ethical online focus groups

Before focus groups

1. Ensure appropriate paperwork is in place – This includes sharing consent forms, an information sheet, and safety planning documents with participants where relevant. You can view our self-harm safety planning document as inspiration for some things to consider.

2. Assess the wellbeing of participants – If the focus groups are on a sensitive subject like mental health, you might want to consider assessing participant’s wellbeing before they take part. Before we held our focus group, we shared CORE-10 forms to assess potential participant’s mental wellbeing. Given the content of the sessions we were running, we didn’t want to include any young people in moderate or severe psychological distress. Anyone who had a CORE-10 form indicate that they fell within these categories were offered one to one therapy sessions and a discussion was had about whether they should participate in the focus groups. On the day itself, all participants again were asked to see if anything had changed to allow for the most up to date risk assessment possible.

3. Get an emergency contact for all participants – Ensure that you have emergency contacts for all participants before the focus groups start. This is so that if anyone leaves the online meeting without having let the facilitator know, that you can get in touch with the emergency contact provided to ensure participant’s safety.

During focus groups

4. At the start of focus groups, agree ground rules including confidentiality and let participants know the protocols that will be followed in the case of any disclosures. This is to create a safe and open environment from the start of the session.

5. Ensure staff are appropriately trained where sensitive topics are being discussed – This could be Scottish Mental Health First Aid Trained, ASIST, or SafeTalk. We had two trained psychotherapists co-facilitate our focus groups. One delivered the session, while the other offered a safe space for de-escalation if someone was triggered and needed to step away from the group. Staff should be confident and available to undertake an intervention if a situation arises and appropriate safety measures should be in place for this to ensure a duty of care to all participants.

6. End focus groups sessions with a self-care activity – We’d recommend ending all sessions with a self-care activity to promote and encourage participants and facilitators to look after their mental health and wellbeing.

After focus groups

7. Have another wellbeing check-in – After-care is an important element of any focus group that you hold. After each of our focus groups, we had participants complete another CORE-10 form to see whether their mental health and wellbeing had been impacted by the session. Facilitators also held a debrief with participants after the session and provided signposting information to our own support services as well as other free listening services, should they be needed.

8. Compensate participants for their time – If possible, consider how you can compensate participants for taking part in the focus group and giving up their time. For example, we gave everyone who participated in our groups a £50 voucher for a retailer of their choice.