Anyone wonder why we are called moderators

When I started moderating about 10 years ago I wondered why that was the title given to us. Why aren't we called "interviewers", "facilitators" or "leaders"?

The answer suddenly hit me as I completed my training in psychotherapy. In Gestalt, one of the models of a healthy person is one who can deal with circumstances in an "even-keeled way" and take responsibility for his or her actions. In other words, they can moderate their behaviour.

Looking further at the definition of the verb "to moderate", we see it means "to reduce the excessiveness of; make less violent, severe, intense, or rigorous: to moderate the sharpness of one's words."

To me this gives the perfect definition of a focus group moderator - they are there to make sure that everyone's opinions, thoughts and emotions get equal time - no one person or thought should dominate. What this means to me, however, is that I am moderating the whole person within the qualitative research. My goal is not to just let a person's head or rational thoughts dominate the discussion. My goal is to view participants as a whole and moderate between their head, heart, emotions, dreams and fears. I know I have done a good job as a moderator when I have moderated the "sharpness of one's words" and brought out "the richness of one's emotions".