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Special Needs Focus Group Print E-mail
As the Philadelphia Children’s Foundation works to expand its resource website, we are trying to understand what the students in our community truly need.  Our next large project is the Special Needs portion of the website, and our goal is to offer students with disabilities and their parents a place to find information and resources for all stages of their life.  In order to understand the needs of these students, we coordinated with Widener Memorial School, a special needs school within the Philadelphia School District, to conduct a series of focus groups.

On January 28th and 29th, four representatives from the Philadelphia Children’s Foundation visited Widener Memorial School and met with a total of 19 students.  We spoke to the groups of students in their computer lab for approximately 45 minutes a session.  The students were asked questions about their technology usage, website layout preferences, and interests, in the hope that we could develop our website based on their answers.  It was set-up like a discussion so that we could give each student a chance to speak and explain their opinions.  Pizza and certificates were distributed to all of the students as a thank you for their help.

The focus groups were extremely successful.  We gained a lot of valuable information, some of it expected and some of it a bit surprising.  The students offered their opinions on different websites and what they would like to see on the Philadelphia Children's Foundation resource website.  From the focus groups, we have a lot of suggestions and information to work with as we are in the development stages.  The focus groups turned out to be a fun experience for both the students and PCF staff.  We were able to have a casual conversation and get to see some of the students’ personalities.  They showed that they have a wide variety of interests, all of which we hope to address with our website.  The Widener Memorial School was very welcoming and helpful throughout the whole process and the students were very friendly.  Overall, we had a very positive experience working with them and collecting valuable information.