Information Exchange: Events

 

In addition to providing useful input to the research effort, these focus groups also served as a pretest of the focus group topics and areas of emphasis, in order to identify potential changes before the next stage of research. The findings will be used to identify and develop measures of infrastructure performance and quality that are particularly meaningful to customers. In turn, these insights may be particularly helpful to owners and operators in improving service to better meet customer needs and in providing information to customers about services and performance that is targeted to what they want and need.

 

It should be noted that the focus groups were not intended to provide statistically significant information. They provide qualitative insights into what some current users see as important attributes of and information about these types of infrastructure. The results are not meant to represent any particular subset of users (such as transit riders) or of all users. The results shown below show a range of reactions to questions posed as part of a multi-party dialogue in the focus groups. Throughout the report, terms like “most,” “some,” or “many” are used to indicate the general sense of what participants expressed. Quantifying the actual numbers of respondents (such as “6 out of 11 focus group participants felt that….”) would suggest a level of confidence in how well participants represent all users that would not be accurate.”

 

Two focus groups were held in Los Angeles, California on the campus of the University of Southern California on December 14, 1999. One session was held during the day and the other in the early evening. Each focus group involved a total of 12-15 participants and lasted about two hours. Participants were University employees drawn from mailing lists who represented a broad spectrum of racial, ethnic, gender and age groups. Income diversity was not ascertained."