Methods/Types of research

 

Primary Research/Self-Generated Research

Primary research is a type of research that is conducted by yourself. For example in my production of my poster first I had to do some research on the older poster before I produced the new poster. I used questionnaires to help me find something out about people who would be looking at the poster, the types of questions that could be asked are as follows Age, Gender, Genre Etc. In professional research other types of research could be carried out like Interviews, Observations and focus groups. One of the main parts I believe is observations this could be at test screenings for example the film will be played and the audio (Laughing, Screaming) of the people reactions will be recorded. Observations could also link into Self-Generated research as it is collecting your own research from something like a video or an audio piece. 
An example of primary research in the media industry is questionnaires, some film production companies will question people about what they like about film or what film they like, researchers do this because they want to know what audience they are going for, another example could be a test screening of the film, then they have a questionnaire about what they just watched.

 Secondary Research

Secondary research is collecting a research material that has been provided by someone else, for example gaining information of a website like IMDB. This type of research is common in this day and age because of the use of the Internet is simple now. One of the main uses of the Internet is to be able to get information of almost anything. When conducting our research we used online websites to find out various information about the movie. We looked for the gross and the budget of the film as well as the marketing of the product like trailers and posters. Another way of finding some research about TV viewers is by contacting BARB (Broadcasters Audience Research Board) which collect different data about the amount of viewers a television show will get.
An example of people using secondary research is ITV they have received information from multiple audience research companies and they have said they in the anglia region 99% of adults watch TV and the 92% of people watch ITV in anglia.

 Quantitative Research

Quantitative research is data that can handled with numbers and fixed categories. This research is to ask people on their opinions in a structured way so they can gain statistics about their questions they asked. When I was researching we had to use our data gained from our questionnaires and put these into graphs to show our statistics. Quantitative research is closed questioning that is either a yes or a no. Professional quantitative research would be carried out in most productions as the film producing companies what to find out some hard data about their audience.

 

Qualitative Research

Qualitative research is assessing issues and answering questions but gaining the information without using any numbers to back the poster up. Qualitative research is more of a research that finds more about an opinion on something for example instead of using a Yes/No question, it will be a question like 'Why do you like this film poster' ,this type is asked because the researchers want to find out what the targeted audience like about it and what they don't like, as this will help them when creating a new poster. The idea of asking these questions are to gain more information out about the person by putting their opinions across.
In the professional industry this type of research could be carried out by reviews, blogs or questionnaires about the film. For example a group of researchers could get a a group of people and ask them questions about a product and see their reactions to the questions asked, this will help them get a deeper understanding about their product.
Qualitative research is used to get a deeper understanding of something, this could be what did you like about the test screening, this helps researchers as they can then feedback to the editors to change the parts people didn't like.

 Data Gathering Agencies

There are many different data gathering agencies for different types of media.

BARB:

Broadcasters Audience Research Board

Provides viewing Figures for UK television audiences

Rajar:

Radio Joint Audience Research

Measuring Radio audience in the UK

There are many more of the data gathering agencies but these two are the main ones. Data gathering agencies are a type of secondary research in a way that it is not research gained from your own knowledge. These agencies help different companies provide figures for them to work with, which could be to promote the product. In my research I didn't use any Data gathering agencies.

 Purposes of Research:

 Audience and Market Research 

The idea of research is to gain more information about the audience targeted. The producers of a film have to make sure they have targeted the right audience for their production or it will not succeed. AS there are many different types of people the researchers have to look deeply into their lifestyle.

Demographics :

Demographics is the characteristics of the population. This could be the: Age, Gender, Race, Religion etc. This is key research for the production team as they need to find out more about the audience they have targeted. Demographics also could link in with Lifestyle/Subsets as this is the Class or lifestyle of the person. There are various types of classes a producer can target ranging from working class to Upper class. In my production of my poster I decided to target more of male gender but with a working class lifestyle.

You could also be a part of market research as many different data gathering agencies will target different areas of the world or a particular country to get feedback. This links in with geo-demographics as a market research company could analyse different parts of the country to see how they react to the film/poster.

 Production Research

When researching the team has to think about if their film is going to make a profit. This is Cost/Finance, as the production team will have to have in mind their production budget they will have to consider which personnel they will have. Personnel is key to research as the audience wants big names to produce the film or to be acting in the film, so with a bid budget the producers could entice big names. After assessing which actors are going to be in the production then the production team have to assess which content they want to be in their posters and trailers. To do this they could question people about which character stands out more to them or what do they like to see in a poster etc. Once the poster or trailer has been produced, then the production team has to think where the placement of their advert is going to be, for a poster this could be on a billboard or on a building but for a video this could be youtube or electric billboards at bus stations. The placement of advertisement is key as in different places there will be different amounts of people and different kinds of people, this could link back to geo-demographics because if they researchers found out that a certain place likes action films they would push the advertising there.

Assessing Research Data

Validity

The researchers have to make sure that their research is valid otherwise this could invalidate their results. As most people are not always honest as most people say what the researchers want to hear, the researchers have to find ways around of invalidating their results. This could be asking detailed questions. In my research some of my results could be invalid as I asked my friends and family and they could give some results for what I want them to do. So the researchers have to control as many variables as possible so the research is valid. There are two types of research internal and external. Internal invalidity is where the research may have been affected by factors other than those thought to have caused them, or because the interpretation of the data by the researcher is not clearly understandable. External invalidity is where the research has been made invalid as it is about contexts outside what the research wants.

Reliability

A way to improve my reliability is by repeating my test again. This could be repeating my questionnaires or repeating test screenings, but the repeated tests have to be repeated under the same conditions as the first test was or it will not be valid. In my research I didn't repeat any of my questionnaires for the same poster, this could have affected my results as it might not have been 100% correct.

An example of reliability in professional media is that they repeat test screening to see what different people like and don't like about the film, another could be repeating their questionnaires, every other questionnaire is giving them more information about the people, so this helps them when researching and this improves reliability as they are repeating tests.

Representativeness and Generalizability
When assessing your research you have to make sure that it is correct, in a sense that you can't ask just a small amount of people in a certain area, you have to research widely to find out the true picture about your research. You can't just ask 80,000 people who go to watch football, what do they think about a new action film? as this doesn't represent the country as a whole, and you cant be bias while carry out research in the way of asking only people who are only interested in that type of subject. Representativeness therefore wouldn't exactly link with generalizabilty. Generalizabilty is when you take a sample amount of people and you make this the average of a large amount of people for example : In my class I could ask what type of genre of film do you like? I could then get a response that in a class 10, 8 people liked action the most, I then could say that on average 80% of people like action films, effectively this is not correct, you can't assume that 80% of people like actions films just because a small amount of people did, this is were representativeness comes into play as you would ask more people and try and get a average.