We're recruiting for Mumsnet pre-election focus groups: would you like to take part?

This is the sort of thing that I would love to take part in but I live too far away and it would end up costing me money - you've left it too late to get the cheapy rail tickets and it would be cheaper for me to fly from Glasgow!

I'd probably need one night overnight accomodation, and to find someone to look after my children after school as dh works and could not take a day off for something like this.

It sounds like a deliberate ploy to keep it London-centric, but as the meedja is already so London focussed I'm sure it didn't even occur to anyone that this was being exclusive.

One of the reasons I vote nationalist, normally!

Just to hijack the thread for a second. Market research. How does one get into it? Is there anyone you can recommend? Thanks

Yes QS, it was the same when I went to the one I mentioned. And we were supplied with some fabulous good and drinks, even though that wasn't the focus of the research.

This is the kind of email I get for real market research:

1. Carers Important Restrictions: MUST NOT have taken part in any market research projects within the last 12 months, and MUST NOT have taken part in any Market Research about Carers previously, and MUST NOT work in Public Relations, Advertising, TV/Radio/Journalism or Market Research.

Required:

• ALL MUST provide 35+ hours of care per week to a partner, husband, wife, brother, sister, child, relative, friend, neighbour etc.
• ALL MUST earn less than Ã?£95 per week net pay (after tax and National Insurance).
• ALL MUST NOT receive any carer's allowance.

Age: 16+ years
Gender: Male or Female
Date: before end of April
Time: tba
Duration: 1.5 hours
Venue: in-home (or other location if preferred)
Research Format: individual interview
Incentive: �£40 cash

your criteria excludes a lot of people eg working,commitments,study.hardly representative or deep sample if only those

available to participate all 3 sessions
able to travel

How many members does MN have and how many people will be chosen for this focus group?

As an aside to BIWI, I went to a focus group for Vertbaudet a few years ago. It was very interesting. It was also interesting to see how they treated the people who had arrived and who they after all did not need (scruffilyy dressed, no fashion sense ), courteously, apologised saying they had invited a few extras in case not all showed, paid them, thanked them for their time and willingness, shook their hands, and let them go home. There was gratitude, even if they were not needed. Very professional.

I also went to one for Slug & Lettuce. That was fun.

Supporting/promoting MN is one thing. And I'm all in favour of that.

But this kind of exercise actually doesn't do MN any favours, and it certainly does market research a disservice.

On this post it makes it clear it's for an article - but when it's actually in the article, it will purport to be research that was conducted by .

Anyway, will get off my soapbox now as I have to go to do some real market research. About important things. Like frozen food.

It begs the question:

What IS mumsnet?

It makes it pretty clear that it is for an article so it doesn't appear to me to be market research, just some editorial in run up to the election.

The papers need to attempt to keep momentum somehow so I expect this is just one of the ways of doing so.

QS, I don't think anyone thinks that they're important do they? It seems to me that MN are just exploiting the opportunity to get lots of free press, seems pretty sensible to me. The thing with a democracy is that every vote is important, not just those of a certain group but it can't do any harm to have mothers being more vocal. Of course the PM is wooing other Mothers, he needs to woo as many people as possible to win, everyone counts in a democracy!

Even if the only thing to come out of it is some coverage in the Times then that would still be a positive, it might reach just one person who could do with the support that MN is so good for.

I feel sorry for MNHQ, they can never bloody win!

maybe I'm just too cynical Biwi

well I don't/can't speak for most people but I didn't see the market research angle at all - it's PR, I can't see how it could be anything else

it couldn't masquerade as anything else I would have thought (given the way people will be chosen and the sample they are choosing from)

The pm will be on Netmums on mothersday. So clearly they are wooing ALL mums of forums, not just us.

foxinsocks - the OP asked if we wanted to take part in 'focus groups' and that a 'polling company' was going to be involved - therefore for most people, this will come across as if it's market research rather than the PR exercise it so patently is.

You may not have a problem with that, but as a professional market researcher I seriously do. It undermines the faith that people may have in market research and it makes it harder for us to get people to take part in legitimate research as a consequence.

I don't object to MN being involved in the shenanigans in the run up to the election - in many ways I applaud it, as it's a demonstration of how politicians have come to realise that they must engage with the electorate - even if they do happen to have children who take them out of the workplace at inconsiderate times - but this has stepped over a very important boundary, IMVHO.

Well said biwi.

this whole sucking up to the media and playing into "a mumsnet election" I find it pathetic and laughable.

In a few years, or maybe months there will be articles written about how a web community were duped into believeing they actually were an important part in politics. I resent that we are regarded so naive and gullible.

Maybe something useful will come out of it, maybe it will even show that women are so tied up in their domestic sphere, of juggling childcare/life/work, they cannot have a place in neither politics nor be taken seriously in the workforce. If so, if any politician were keen to make changes, it would be a good think. But I doubt it.

I don't think it said it was market research did it (maybe I misread)?

Mumsnet, if I were you, I'd go back to the polling company and the Times and ask them to do it entirely online. That way, you will get the proper feel of mumsnet anyway as you'll guarantee a lot more participants. The whole draw of mumsnet is the online nature so I can't see them having too much of a problem with that - they can still pick people via the survey (and pay them ).

I'm not 100% sure why they'd need people in real life for this thing anyway other than the photos tbh.

yes true BIWI - "Mummy Vox Pop" would be more accurate. 'Tis clearly more about a bit of fun than serious polling. MNHQ need to embrace the fun a little more here methinks.

If it helps Lulu, I've put my name down and I'm none of those. I'm lucky enough to live close enough that I can do it and get home for the school run, and I just don't happen to work during the day (although surely yummy mummy etc etc have a political view point worth hearing too? And being all of those isn't necessarily the blueprint for some Stepford clone? Whatever's on the outside =/= to the individual on the inside?)

would have liked to participate but live in North East Scotland... for an online forum it seems a bit crap that you have to be there in person to participate.

thank you Biwi

am still exceptionally cross about this

i know MN has to garner publicity and being in the times being pseudo political rather than being slated for being a load of megalomaniac lactivist beatches, is a good thing, but it will hardly be a representation of what/who MN really is

so in the end it will be another mispresentative , yummy mummy home counties, boden wearing, don't need to work biscuitbun fight

a real shame

Well said BIWI

It doesn't sound like the criteria for a representative group of women.

CAN I JUST POINT OUT THAT THIS KIND OF THING IS NOT MARKET RESEARCH, AND IT SHOULDN'T BE PRESENTED TO MUMSNETTERS AS SUCH.

I am a market researcher, and I run and analyse focus groups. There are strict rules in the Market Research Society about keeping respondents anonymous, so posting your real names and photographs in the papers would not be allowed.

And also, if it was really kosher market research there would be much more stringent criteria defining who would be recruited, to ensure that you know exactly who the groups are representing - not just a cross section of women on MN who happen to be available on a certain day, when they have childcare.

AND respondents should be incentivised properly for their time, including out of pocket expenses.

I know that MN gets used for all kinds of surveys, but it really, really, really, REALLY, annoys me if you're going to put this forward as genuine market research rather than just an exercise by the Times to generate stories for their paper.

Please, MN, make the distinction between journalism/PR and genuine market research. Our job, recruiting people to take part, can be hard enough, without things like this which will give our industry a bad name.