Screening

The term screening is generally used to describe any process to (mainly) eliminate respondents from research samples who may for various reasons provide biased or misleading feedback.

Often used in relation to selection of respondents for focus groups, screening is the process of selecting or eliminating prospective focus group participants on the basis of their demographics, background, product/service usage patterns, previous exposure to focus groups (to eliminate the 'professional' focus group attendee), a professional relationship to the product/service class (such as working for a competitor or having a professional rather than personal knowledge of the product class) or involvement in the market research, advertising, or marketing profession itself.