{"site":{"name":"Koji","description":"AI-native customer research platform that helps teams conduct, analyze, and synthesize customer interviews at scale.","url":"https://www.koji.so","contentTypes":["blog","documentation"],"lastUpdated":"2026-06-05T05:56:09.748Z"},"content":[{"type":"documentation","id":"924277a2-71e7-4899-a667-f558a74fa84e","slug":"focus-group-questions-examples","title":"Focus Group Questions: 50+ Examples and How to Write Them","url":"https://www.koji.so/docs/focus-group-questions-examples","summary":"A practical bank of 50+ focus group question examples organized by the five Krueger and Casey question types (opening, introductory, transition, key, ending) and by research goal (product, concept, brand, messaging). Covers rules for writing unbiased questions, the groupthink and social-desirability limitations of the format, and how AI-moderated individual interviews with Koji ask the same questions at scale without group bias.","content":"A focus group question is an open-ended prompt a moderator uses to spark discussion among 6-10 participants and surface shared attitudes, language, and reactions. The strongest focus group guides move through five question types in sequence: **opening** questions that get everyone talking, **introductory** questions that frame the topic, **transition** questions that deepen engagement, **key** questions that target your core objectives, and **ending** questions that confirm and prioritize what was said. This guide gives you 50+ ready-to-use examples for each stage, the rules for writing questions that do not bias your data, and how AI-moderated interviews let you ask the same questions to 50 people individually in the time it takes to schedule one group.\n\n## The 5 Types of Focus Group Questions\n\nThe most widely used framework for sequencing focus group questions comes from Richard Krueger and Mary Anne Casey, whose book *Focus Groups: A Practical Guide for Applied Research* is the standard reference in the field. They organize a discussion guide into five categories, ordered to move participants from comfortable small talk into the substance you actually care about.\n\n1. **Opening questions** are quick, round-robin, factual, and answerable by everyone in a sentence. Their only job is to get every voice into the room early.\n2. **Introductory questions** introduce the general topic and get people thinking about their connection to it.\n3. **Transition questions** move the conversation deeper and link the introduction to your key questions.\n4. **Key questions** are the 2-5 questions that drive the entire study. You should spend the majority of your session here.\n5. **Ending questions** help participants reflect, confirm their position, and tell you what matters most.\n\nA well-paced 60-90 minute session typically includes 1-2 opening, 1-2 introductory, 1-2 transition, 2-5 key, and 1-3 ending questions. More than 12 total questions almost always means you are rushing.\n\n## 50+ Focus Group Question Examples\n\n### Opening Questions (warm-up)\n- Tell us your first name and one thing you did this morning before joining.\n- What is one app or product you have opened already today?\n- How long have you been using [product category]?\n- Describe your role in one sentence.\n- When you think of [category], what is the first brand that comes to mind?\n\n### Introductory Questions\n- What does [product/topic] mean to you?\n- Think back to the last time you [used the product/faced the problem]. What happened?\n- How did you first get started with [category]?\n- What words would you use to describe your experience with [category] so far?\n- What made you interested in joining this discussion today?\n\n### Transition Questions\n- Walk us through the last time you tried to [accomplish the core task]. What were the steps?\n- What is working well for you with your current solution, and what is not?\n- How do you decide between competing options in this space?\n- When [the problem] happens, what do you usually do next?\n- Who else is involved when you make a decision about [category]?\n\n### Key Questions - Product and Experience\n- What is the hardest part of [accomplishing the goal] today?\n- If you could change one thing about [product], what would it be and why?\n- Tell us about a time [product] frustrated you. What happened right before?\n- What almost stopped you from buying or signing up?\n- What would have to be true for you to recommend this to a colleague or friend?\n- Which features do you actually use, and which do you ignore?\n\n### Key Questions - Concept and Product Testing\n- What is your honest first reaction to this [concept/mockup/ad]?\n- What do you think this product does, in your own words?\n- Who do you think this is for?\n- What is believable about this, and what feels exaggerated?\n- What is missing that would make this a clear yes for you?\n- How does this compare to what you use today?\n\n### Key Questions - Brand and Messaging\n- When you see this brand, what feeling comes to mind?\n- Which of these messages sounds most like it was written for you?\n- What does this tagline promise you, and do you believe it?\n- If this brand were a person, how would you describe them?\n- What would make you trust this brand more?\n\n### Ending Questions\n- Of everything we discussed, what matters most to you?\n- If you were advising the team, what is the single most important thing they should fix or keep?\n- Is there anything we should have asked but did not?\n- Summing up in one sentence: how would you describe your ideal version of this product?\n- On a scale of 1-10, how likely are you to use this, and what would move you one number higher?\n\n## How to Write Focus Group Questions That Do Not Bias Your Data\n\nEven a great question list fails if the questions are leading or loaded. Follow these rules:\n\n- **Keep questions open-ended.** Ask \"What did you think of the checkout?\" not \"Did you like the checkout?\" Yes/no prompts collapse rich discussion into a single word.\n- **Ask one thing at a time.** \"How easy and enjoyable was setup?\" is double-barreled. Split it.\n- **Stay neutral.** \"How frustrating was the old design?\" presumes frustration. Ask \"How did the old design feel to use?\"\n- **Avoid jargon and insider framing.** Use the words your participants use, not your internal product names.\n- **Ask about specific past behavior, not hypotheticals.** \"Tell us about the last time you canceled a subscription\" beats \"Would you ever cancel?\" Memory of real events is far more reliable than imagined futures.\n- **Save your most important key questions for the middle.** Energy and candor peak after warm-up and before fatigue sets in.\n\n## The Hidden Problem With Focus Groups\n\nHere is the uncomfortable truth: even perfect questions cannot fully overcome the format. The defining feature of a focus group - the social dynamic - is also its biggest liability. According to the [Nielsen Norman Group](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/focus-groups/), groupthink is the most common failure mode in focus group research. Two well-documented biases distort the data:\n\n- **Social desirability bias:** participants say what they believe is socially acceptable rather than what they truly think, an effect that is significantly stronger in groups than in private settings.\n- **Groupthink and anchoring:** once a dominant or confident participant stakes out a position, others tend to follow, masking the real diversity of opinion in the room.\n\nAdd the logistics - recruiting 8 schedules to align, renting facilities, paying a moderator, and the fact that you typically need 2-3 groups per objective - and a single round of focus groups can take weeks and cost thousands of dollars while still capturing only a handful of voices.\n\n## The Modern Approach: Ask the Same Questions, Individually, at Scale\n\nThe questions above are excellent. The format does not have to be a group. With **Koji**, an AI-native research platform, you load the same discussion guide into an AI moderator that interviews each participant *individually* - eliminating groupthink and social desirability bias because no one hears anyone else answer.\n\n- **No groupthink, no dominant voices.** Every participant responds privately, so quiet dissenters are heard as clearly as confident extroverts.\n- **Tailored follow-up for every person.** When someone gives a thin answer, Koji probes - \"What specifically made that frustrating?\" - the way a skilled human moderator would, on every single interview.\n- **Scale and speed.** While traditional research firms schedule one group at a time, Koji can run 50 individual AI-moderated interviews in parallel and deliver synthesized themes in hours, not weeks. Teams using AI-assisted research report dramatically faster time-to-insight.\n- **Voice or text.** Run conversational voice interviews for emotional nuance or text interviews for reach and convenience.\n\nCrucially, Koji does not force everything into open conversation. You can mix open discussion with **six structured question types** - open_ended, scale, single_choice, multiple_choice, ranking, and yes_no - so the same study captures both the rich \"why\" and clean, quantifiable data you can chart. A focus group cannot reliably do that; ranking 8 features by show of hands in a room is noisy, while a structured ranking question gives you a clean ordering from every respondent. See the [structured questions guide](/docs/structured-questions-guide) for how to combine them.\n\nYou do not need a PhD in moderation or a six-figure agency budget. You bring the questions; Koji runs the conversations, transcribes them, and surfaces the themes automatically.\n\n## A Sample Focus Group Discussion Guide\n\nUse this skeleton, swapping in examples from above:\n\n1. **Opening (5 min):** Name + warm-up question.\n2. **Introductory (10 min):** Topic framing and personal connection.\n3. **Transition (10 min):** Walk-through of current behavior.\n4. **Key questions (35 min):** Your 3-5 core objectives, with probes ready.\n5. **Ending (10 min):** Prioritization, the \"what matters most\" question, and \"anything we missed?\"\n\nWhether you run it as a live group or as AI-moderated individual interviews, this structure keeps the session focused and your findings actionable.\n\n## Related Resources\n\n- [Structured Questions Guide](/docs/structured-questions-guide) - the 6 question types that make qualitative studies quantifiable\n- [Focus Group Research Guide](/docs/focus-group-research-guide) - the complete methodology, from recruiting to moderation\n- [AI-Moderated Focus Groups](/docs/ai-moderated-focus-groups) - how AI changes the group research model\n- [Focus Groups vs Interviews](/docs/focus-groups-vs-interviews) - choosing the right qualitative method\n- [Writing Interview Questions](/docs/writing-interview-questions) - principles for unbiased, high-signal questions\n- [Probing and Follow-Up Questions](/docs/probing-and-follow-up-questions) - how to dig past surface-level answers","category":"Research Methods","lastModified":"2026-06-05T03:14:45.666681+00:00","metaTitle":"Focus Group Questions: 50+ Examples & Templates (2026)","metaDescription":"50+ focus group question examples by session stage and goal, rules for writing unbiased questions, plus a faster AI-moderated alternative with Koji.","keywords":["focus group questions","focus group questions examples","focus group discussion guide","focus group questions to ask","moderator questions","qualitative research questions"],"aiSummary":"A practical bank of 50+ focus group question examples organized by the five Krueger and Casey question types (opening, introductory, transition, key, ending) and by research goal (product, concept, brand, messaging). Covers rules for writing unbiased questions, the groupthink and social-desirability limitations of the format, and how AI-moderated individual interviews with Koji ask the same questions at scale without group bias.","aiPrerequisites":["focus-group-research-guide"],"aiLearningOutcomes":["Sequence a focus group guide using the 5 question types","Choose unbiased, open-ended question wording","Adapt questions for product, concept, brand, and messaging studies","Decide when AI-moderated individual interviews beat a live group"],"aiDifficulty":"beginner","aiEstimatedTime":"9 min read"}],"pagination":{"total":1,"returned":1,"offset":0}}