The nature and purposes of research in the creative media industries.

Types/methods of research

Primary research

Primary research is any type of research that you go out and collect yourself. Examples include questionnaires, interviews, observations, focus groups, audience panels and participation in internet forums.

For my advertising project I had to send out a questionnaire, I created a survey using the website survey monkey. This allowed me to design a specifically tailored questionnaire that would be able to provide me with the information I required as well as creating graphs so then the information could be easily read and understood. I used this technique to find out peoples views on out advert I created.The questionnaire contained 9 questions (see below)

With the information that I had gathered back I was then able to correctly find out whether I achieved my aim with this task and whether my predicted target audience was what I was hoping for. I much prefer primary research over secondary research as this is able to give me more accurate answers, so I can get the little details correct and specific.

Secondary research

Secondary research involves the use of existing research rather than primary research. Secondary research can come from books, journals, reference-based books and directories, periodicals, newspapers, film archives, photo libraries, internet, CD Rom databases, audio material, ratings, circulation figures and government statistics. Although this form of research is most likely the easiest, it may also be the most inaccurate; this would be because it isn't always kept up to date.

In my project for my secondary research, I researched several different awareness sites for mental health and different charity pages such as Mind to find out the latest statistics and facts to show in my documentary.

http://www.youngminds.org.uk/training_services/policy/mental
_health_statistics?gclid=CjwKEAjwm-aqBRD39YPqhbzthzYSJACFj-At
_jY5ZbUjqftBh2RefxP3_yMjj8bjtFjt6mIbJ0eCBBoCnePw_wc

http://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/types-of-mental-health-problems
/statistics-and-facts-about-mental-health/key-facts-and-statistics/

http://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/help-information/mental-health-statistics/

I also chose to watch several different documentaries about Mental health such as a BBC Three documentary called Diaries of a Broken Mind. I found both documentaries interesting and they gave me an insight of how to structure my documentary, whats important to include and it also gave me more information such as statistics that I could of included in my documentary.

                           


       

Quantitative research

Quantitative research refers to data/research in the form of numbers and statistics instead of words. One example of this could be star-ratings, for instance if an individual wants to see how popular certain comedy films are they could visit a website like Internet Movie Database (IMDB) and see what other people around the world thought of the film in a numerical rating. Other examples of quantitative research could be readership circulation figures, hits on a website, box office figures, sales of CDs and DVDs etc.

One way that I personally used quantitative data was in a a few closed questions in my questionnaire that I produced for my advertising project to give me reliable quantitative data.

Another way I conducted quantitative research was by researching statistics surrounding my topic of interest within the certain project, in this case it was Mental health.  

http://www.youngminds.org.uk/training_services/policy/mental_health_statistics

Qualitative research

Qualitative research refers to data/research in the form of written word instead of statistics and numbers. Examples of qualitative research can be film reviews, game reviews, fanzine websites, attitudes to media products, responses to news coverage, responses to advertising campaigns, discussion.

Whilst watching the BBC Three documentary; Diaries of a Broken Mind I read several different opinions and views of mental health that other people had left in the comments as well as peoples own experiences. I used this to my advantage to see what other people want to see in a documentary surrounding this subject.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATTbHvI-pVU

Data gathering agencies

The BARB (Broadcasters Audience Research Board) is the organisation that complies audience measurement and television ratings in the UK, they are used to show a rough idea of the viewing figures for various different programs and is now owned by the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5, BSkyB and the IPA.

They have a select team of people who will watch TV and be monitored and then do some calculations, which then allows them to get the numbers of people that watched a particular show. This proves to be an invaluable tool to people whom create media texts as this lets them know all about the popularity of certain programmes. 

For instance if a media company wanted to create a new show they could see how popular the genre for shows are as well as which is a popular time for shows of that genre. Internet Movie Database, or IMDB, is also applicable here as they are a free online source of information. Any new film can be added and people can add data to it and they can leave a review and rating. This can be used much like BARB in that people looking to create a media text can look for what is popular and read reviews to see what people enjoyed and what people didn't like.

When I was looking on their website at the viewing figures ratings I was surprised at how high up documantaries were. After I had searched up the different types of media research agencies I had then found that there are many of them, and they are all different in their own way. They all take on new and different forms of research to help other non-profit and profit organisations. 

Purposes of research

Audience and market research

Market research is where a company will look into what is popular and check on various different factors. For example in most cases timing is important, when something is popular in the media it is best to release something relating to that so that you get viewers to the media text. Some examples of research are things like demographics and audience profiling so that they can get lots of information about the people that will be watching the piece. 

For my audience and market research I looked at the demographics, this is where my documentary would be able to appeal to the Mainly teenagers or anyone who is affected by these issues or what to learn more information. I felt that this range was a good choice to strive for as anyone can be affected by mental health disorders. It would also then appeal to both the males and females that could be working in any working profession or in education. 

Production research

My production research consisted of my pre-production paper work. This had consisted with the content, placement in media, finance, costs, technological resources, personnel and locations. 

For my locations I had to make sure that I had the correct times and dates, to ensure that I was going to get the locations owner to allow me to film during these times. Because I was able to do this all correctly I was able to get all of the paper work for this done fast and efficiently so I was able to get on with the project. 


I had then created a synopsis to briefly cover what the project documentary was going to be about, so that the audience are fully aware of what to expect.