Research Methods

Audience research is a process that highlights all production that is related to the media and everything that we as audiences have watched has been planned and explored so that it can be the best of its ability in terms of quality and success.

'Research' on the whole is very expensive, however companies do not seem to stop spending so much money on this. Here are some reasons why:

- So that audiences react to the product in the correct way 

- To ensure that the final product can be completed successfully in the given time limit

- Media products are costly produce 

- To ensure that the correct audience is attracted

There are two general types of data; qualitative data is information about qualities - information that cannot actually be measured. e.g.'s include: 'the softness of a cat' or 'the colour of the sky'. On the other hand, quantitative data is data about quantities - information that can be measured and portrayed with the use of numbers. Examples of this include 'your height' and the 'number of pennies in your pocket'.

Primary research -  Primary research is an original research method used to collect information for a specific purpose. This is where there is no data available for you, you have to collect everything from the start of your investigation by yourself. These means designing your questionnaires, collecting the data from people yourself and analysing the data yourself too. Primary sources of research include; surveys, interviews and the analysis of existing texts. In an interview (for example) you could ask quantitative and qualitative questions. Qualitative questions are questions that are open and have no set answer, which results in higher quality answers. On the other hand quantitative questions are closed questions that have multiple choice answers such as yes or no, and these have set answers.

Secondary research - Secondary research is where you already have the necessary data available. When using secondary methods you do not need to start from scratch, you just use the information collected already by other organisations as a basis for your research. Examples of sources for secondary research are; newspapers, books and the internet.

Both methods of research have advantages and disadvantages: 

- Primary research is time consuming and may sometimes be expensive. 

- Secondary research is more time efficient as you are using other people's collection of primary research, although this method of research may not be suitable for everyone's needs. 

In my data collection I will be using primary research to conduct my own surveys. I chose to do this because I think that a survey will be easy to distribute and the data will be easy to collect. I will also be using both qualitative and quantitative questions within my data collection process. I will be doing this because I hope to receive both high quality and honest answers. For example I may ask questions about my short film poster. I want my audience and the rest of the public to tell me their honest opinion on various aspects of my film process so that I can create a result that the public and myself are happy with.  Having said this, something that I will have to consider when conducting a survey is the amount of participants I use to collect my data as it may be challenging to collect the right amount of data. To support this data collection process I may also use qualitative interviews with my target audience. This way I can compare the various data that I will have collected which will then be used for further analysis. A positive aspect of using an interview to collect data is that it is an effective way of collecting, analysing and sharing qualitative data. On the other hand a con of this collection method is that it may be difficult to organise, participants may be difficult to find and interviews are time consuming.