Workshop vs focus group: what’s the difference?

The difference in one paragraph

In a focus group, six to eight people who fit a profile talk through a topic for 90 minutes to two hours, led by a moderator who stays neutral. The participants give their views; the research team takes those away and decides what they mean. In a workshop, a facilitator takes a larger group, often eight to fifteen and sometimes a mix of users, staff and decision makers, through structured activities for half a day or more. The group produces something together, such as a journey map, a ranked list or a draft service, and often makes decisions in the room.

Put simply: a focus group is research about people. A workshop is work done with them.

Workshop and focus group compared

When a focus group is the right call

Use a focus group when you need to hear something before you decide it yourself.

• You have a concept, a name, an advert or a message and want first reactions before you spend more on it.
• You want to know the words an audience uses for a problem, so your copy, forms or service names match.
• You need the range of views in a group, including the ones you hadn't thought of.
• The topic is social, and how people talk about it with others is part of what you are trying to learn.

The people in a focus group should not be expected to design anything. Asking eight strangers to fix your onboarding in the last 20 minutes gets you eight personal wish lists, not a design.

When a workshop is the right call

Use a workshop when you need people to build something with you, and you want them to own it afterwards.

• You are redesigning a service and want patients, staff and managers to map the current journey together and agree where it breaks.
• You have too many ideas and need the people affected to rank them, with reasons.
• You are doing co-production or participatory research, where the point is that people with lived experience shape the work, not just comment on it.
• You need a room of stakeholders to leave with the same picture and a list of next steps.

Workshops are poor at finding out what people really think about something, because the activity and the group pull everyone towards agreement. If you need honest individual reactions, get those first and bring them into the workshop as material.

Where it goes wrong

Calling a workshop a focus group to keep the cost down. A two-hour session with eight people will not produce a service blueprint, however it is labelled. You get a conversation about one, and the team ends up doing the design afterwards without the people it was meant to involve.

Putting managers in a focus group. When the people who run a service sit in on a group about it, the participants soften what they say. Managers belong in the workshop, or behind the observer link, not around the table.

Treating a workshop vote as research. Fifteen people putting stickers on a wall tells you what those fifteen people preferred on that afternoon. It is a good way to agree a direction. It is not evidence that the wider audience wants it.

Doing only one of them when you need both. On most service design projects the strongest order is focus groups or interviews first, to understand people, then a workshop to design with them using what you learned. The research gives the workshop something real to work from.

In health research and PPIE

The same split applies in patient and public involvement, with one addition. In PPIE, contributors are not research participants: they are advising on the research itself. So a PPIE "focus group" is really a consultation, and a PPIE workshop is co-production. Funders such as NIHR look for the second, where public contributors have shaped the design rather than been asked for comments on a finished plan. Our guide to what PPIE is covers the difference between being consulted and being involved.

Questions people ask us

Can a focus group and a workshop be run online? Both can. Focus groups work well on video calls, with six people rather than eight. Workshops are harder online and need shorter sessions, a shared board and more breaks, but they are often the only way to include people who can't travel.

Is a co-design session a workshop? Yes. Co-design is a workshop where the people who will use the thing do the designing, with the team supporting them.

Which is cheaper? A single focus group. A workshop runs for longer, needs more preparation and materials, and usually involves more people. We cover focus group pricing in detail in how much a focus group costs in the UK.

What about a "discussion group" or "listening event"? Those are labels, not methods. Ask whether people are mainly giving views (a focus group) or mainly making something (a workshop), and plan it as that.