Video discussions

Use video discussions to collect information about the behavior, attitudes, and perceptions of your Community members.

There are two types of video discussion activities. The one you choose depends on what is most convenient for your participants and you:

• Scheduled video discussion

  Create scheduled timeslots in advance and invite participants to choose one of the available times. After participants are scheduled, you can send them invitations to the video discussion itself.

• Instant video discussion (also known as ad hoc video discussion)

  Invite participants to the video discussion directly.

The following table provides a closer look at each video discussion type.

	Scheduled video discussion	Instant video discussion
Best for	Research Engaging many participants Participants' availability is unknown, so they are prompted to select one of your available interview times.	Research Engaging a couple of participants Participants' availability is known, so you can invite them directly to one timeslot.
Available communication types	To invite participants to choose a scheduled timeslot: Schedule invitation Schedule reminder To update participants on video discussion changes: Interview communication	Invitation Reminder External invitation (using a third party sample provider) External reminder (using a third party sample provider) Hub invitation
Incentives support	No	No
Allows multiple responses	Schedule invitations and reminders allow single responses. Interview communications allow multiple responses.	Yes
Can duplicate the activity	No	No
Activity tabs	Set Up Scheduling Distribute Track Participants	Set Up Distribute Track Participants

Best practices

Consider the following best practices when you are setting up a video discussion activity:

• Try to keep the discussion group size to 4-6 participants to encourage participation from everyone. Larger groups can create a dynamic where some people dominate the conversation and others do not participate.
• The slowest bandwidth in the group drags everyone down and slows down the conversation. Try to invite participants from the same geographic area to avoid degraded call quality. If possible, avoid having, for example, four European participants and one North American participant because the North American participant will likely slow down the discussion.
• Use in-depth interviews (IDIs) where honest responses from participants are important. People tend to be more honest in IDIs than focus groups. For example, if a participant is asked how often they work out each week, they may be inclined to say they work out more than they do to look better in front of strangers than if they were asked the same question one-on-one.