"I think the list of information gaps we identified will definitely guide our formative research. We tried to keep the list manageable which meant cutting out some things we'd like to know, but weren't the highest priority for this particular project. So far, so good.

The planning team met again this week to talk about research questions. Based on the information gaps we kept, I had everyone come up with a list of research questions. I also approached some members of the Wellington Community Coalition that are not on the planning team and got some questions from them too. Bob didn't really want to get more people involved, but I'm glad we insisted. They came up with some great questions.

But, now we've probably got more than we need. I discussed this with Dan and he cautioned me against trying to do too much with formative research."

"In one of my programs we didn't really pare down our research questions and we ended up with a big mess! Once we got done with our research we couldn't figure out where to go because we were overloaded with information."