Unit 3 Research
Techniques for the Creative Media
Industries
1 Understand the nature and purposes of research in the creative media
industries
D1 comprehensively explain the nature and
purposes of research in the creative media industries with elucidated examples
and consistently using subject terminology correctly
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·
Explain in detail the
meaning of quantitative research
Quantitative research is questions which get a numerical answer.
These can be things such as statistics , percentages, etc. The advantage of
this is you can put the information into graphs or tables to show the results.
This makes it easier to see what results you got and quickly find the answers.
·
Give a variety of examples
showing how and why quantitative research might be used in the media industry
Quantitative research might be used in the media industry to find
out if their product is good. They would ask how many people liked the product
or not and put that in a pie chart as percentages to show the people making it
to carry on. Normally a TV audience tells the producers of a TV program if it’s
good to see if they carry on. The same for a new game, they would release it as
an Alpha product or Beta to test is out and gives feedback. This is usually
some questions at the end of the test asking what they thought out of 5 of
specific aspects.
·
What are the benefits and
limitations of quantitative research
The benefits of quantitative research is you get specific answers
which can be easily read and find out the results quickly. Another advantage is
you can convert the results into different data such as tables or graphs. The limitations
of quantitative research are you can’t get peoples opinions.
·
Explain in detail the
meaning of qualitative research
Qualitative research is questions where you get in-depth answers
which consist of worded answers. This can be opinions of what someone thinks on
a subject, etc.
·
Give a variety of examples
showing how and why qualitative research might be used in the media industry
An example of qualitative research in the media industry is focus
groups. If there is a new song from an artist , people give feedback telling
them their opinion on the song saying good points , bad points and what they
would like better in the song for example.
·
What are the benefits and
limitations of qualitative research
The benefits of qualitative research are you get detailed responses
which you can find out a lot of information about this. You usually get peoples
opinion on a subject which tells you their feelings about that certain thing
which usually tells you how to improve it. The limitations of this are you
can’t store the data conveniently in graphs etc. This means you can’t see an
overall opinion and makes it harder to find information since you have to look
through all the responses yourself.
Methods of research ; Secondary
·
Explain in detail the
meaning of secondary research
Secondary research means you got information from another source.
This could be off the internet for example where someone else has gone and got
the results and give them out to everyone.
This is usually used in medical and legal research but can also be
applied to just about anything. You can usually find secondary research in
magazines , newspapers and government statisitics.
·
Give a variety of examples
of sources of secondary research and
their purpose (eg. www.ITNSource.com – news film
archive,
http://www.visit4info.com/ - archive of
TV advertisements).
·
What are the purposes,
benefits and limitations of secondary
research
The main purpose of secondary research that its fast and easy to
get. That’s the only reason people get it. If they get it from a secondary
source then they don’t have to go through all the effort of going and asking
everyone themselves. The limitations of this are pretty low since you can find
just about any information from someone else but the downside is the
reliability. Just because someone’s give you some statistics it doesn’t always
mean their right.
·
The following are examples
of organizations who gather data which can be accessed for use by others;
Summarise what each organization does and what useful data might be
available from it.
·
http://www.nrs.co.uk/toplinereadership.html - This website is
the “National Readership Survey”. This is a survey which is carried out 12
months a year 7 days a week with 36,000 people being interviewed each year. It
is completely at random who they choose to answer and usually takes27 minutes.
The questions mainly consist of their readership of newspapers , magazines,
etc.
The BBFC is the
rating for film and TV. They make the classification for these. You can find
all the classifications online on the website which anyone can research. You
can do primary research to find out the classifications on your own but its
faster and easier to do it this way. Another thing with BBFC is you know its
reliable since it’s a known company.
Rajar is a company which tracks how many people listen to radio
stations and for how long. They give you quantitative results for the changes
using percentages and then give you a description describing more about it.
This is important if you are attempting to make your own radio station and you
want to know what is popular at the moment to then see how they do it etc.
Barb is a non-profit organisation that gets the results of views
on TV channels. They track the amount of people that watch a specific programs.
You can sort them by amount or channel etc. The company is funded by major
players in the industry that Barb supports.
Skillset are a Sector Skills Council which is made up of TV, film,
radio, interactive media, animation, computer games, facilities, photo imaging,
publishing, advertising, fashion and textiles. People trying to find secondary
research of these subjects can access all this.
The UK Film Council is the BFI who get film statistics. For
example the weekend box office figures which shows how much a box office film
makes in a weekend. They also get information on theatrical, audiences,
exhibition and film on DVD, TV and VOD.
Ipsos MORI is one of the largest and best-known UK research company.
They get research mainly of advertising, loyalty, marketing, media CT, social
and political, and reputation.
Methods of research ; primary
·
Explain in detail the
meaning of primary research
Primary research is research, which is collected first hand by you.
You can do this using questionnaires or focus groups etc.
·
Give a variety of examples
of sources of primary research and
their purposes. (eg. Test screening of
films to a focus group to judge audience reaction and see if any changes need
to be made prior to release. For high grades you could show specific examples
of where such research has taken place and what the results were, i.e. what
changes were decided upon).
Every company does primary research on their product to find out
what people think. For a food company like Kellogg’s will send out freebies of
their new product for people to try and give them feedback. This is about the
same as every other product where people test it and give their viewpoint on
it.
An example of this is JuniorProf. He did research on how people
exercise and their gym routine. He asked questions like what works best for
your workout etc. By getting all this research he manages to change his own gym
routine to benefit him more.
http://juniorprof.wordpress.com/2010/08/21/a-primary-research-paper-has-just-changed-my-gym-routine/
·
What are the purposes,
benefits and limitations of primary
research
The advantages of primary research are that it’s reliable since you
got the information and know the sources of the answers. Also is you can choose
what information to get since it could be missing if you try and get it
secondary. This is a huge benefit to primary and most of the time worth it if
you have the time to get it in. This can also be put as a limitation since it
takes a lot of time to gather the information, which you might not have in some
circumstances. In some cases it can be expensive to get all the paper printed
for example in a questionnaire.
Consider
the following purposes of research;
Detail why you would need to
conduct them, what you might need to find out and the methods you could use to
do it. For higher grades you could show real examples of where this has been
done in industry and how the information was utilised.
·
Research about your audience
You need to research about your audience to see their interests etc.
This is important because if you make a product for a certain audience and they
are not interested in using it then it won’t sell. For example this is a
requirement if you have a radio station since knowing what music your audience
like is vital or they won’t listen to your radio. Capital radio’s audience is mainly teens and
young adults so they find out what music there into and play them on the radio
and this is usually UK Top 40.
·
Research about the market
for a product
Market research is important so you know the current market and what
sells in it. This includes thing such as price, size, etc. For example if Sony
want to release a new MP3 Player then they would need to research popular MP3
players for example the iPod. This tells them what features people want, price
their willing to pay and size of the product. If they didn’t do this then they
would make something that is inferior and people won’t buy it.
·
Pre-production/production
research
Production and pre-production research is important because for some
examples its needed. If a company making a documentary didn’t do research then
it wouldn’t be informative. Research doesn’t just have to be straight forward.
For example they could do a radio interview but then ask questions about their
documentary which doesn’t have to be aired but could be used for it.
