The nature and purposes of research in the creative media industries

Research can become very important in media when it comes to documentary types. This could determine the viability of the future production. It is important that you know as much as you can in order to produce a relevant piece of work. By collecting all the relevant information it will help you when it comes to the planning. There are a few types of research which you can do in order to produce your media work to a professional standards.

Primary Research
This type of research is normally done after the secondary research. The main reason for this research is to find out a certain information about the chosen topic. In order to gather these information primary research is normally done by interviews or even simply observations.

To do primary research for my work I first done an only questioner using smart survey. I then went and sent this questionnaire using social media such as Facebook. Then I also went out myself to a local gym and done some face to face interviews and also observed the gym members as they were exercising.

Secondary Research
This research is normally done first. This is the research which the researcher normally does using other peoples research. For example using the most common source which is the internet. Other useful sources which the research can use are news papers, magazines and even books. This research requires the researcher to use his times going through information that are already provided to him.

I myself did some secondary research using mostly the internet. I found some interesting online webpages that was talking about the fitness history and industry. I also backed up all the information I had took from internet by watching a short documentary on fitness on YouTube. This was also embedded to my work. One last thing I done was use some facts and figures which I took from a few trustable websites.

Quantitative research
Quantitative research is when you ask people for their views and opinions in a structured way so that in future you can produce hard facts and statistics to guide you. This means you have to collect a reasonable amount of data to get a reliable and representative statistical results.

In order to ensure I had quantitative research I made a questionnaire on gym and sent it to a few people using social media. By doing this I was ensuring my data was not only quantitative as it was also reliable and representative as a variety of people with different age group were involved. I managed to gather 36 responses from my online survey.

Qualitative research
This is another type of research in which I came across. This type of research involves exploratory research. The reason this research is done is mainly to gain understanding to opinions, reasons and motivations. The most common methods of gathering qualitative data is by doing observations, taking part in group discussions and individual interviews.

One simple method I used to ensure I also had some qualitative data was by placing a reason box to the answers on my survey in order to collect individual feedbacks. I also went out to the closest gym to do some individual and group interviews.

Here are some examples of questions I used:

Looking at the result for this question the appropriated target audience for my documentary should be between ages 15-19 as most of the answers collected (32/36 responses) vary between those ages. The other 4 response were found between the age 20-24.











For question two we asked the questionnaire takers to write down there gender. The reason we did not use a tick box with only two answers (male & female) is because some people may consider them selves as something else. A few people skipped this question so we only gathered  this information for 27 people. Overall we know that at least we had 15 males who took the questionnaire and 12 females, the others remain unknown.

Question 3 was a important question as we have to know if the people we sending our work to actually knows what is a documentary and has watched some different ones in the pass. By asking them if the watched documentaries we have found that 32 out of 36 actually does watch it.

We also wanted to know if not only they have seen a documentary before, they also know what a 3 minute wonder is because that is pretty much what our documentary is as it is a very short one. Not surprisingly hardly no one knew what it is. Only 10 out of 36 people knew about 3 minute wonders.










After all those question it is obvious that i wanted to ensure my audience would be interested in watching the type of documentary i would make. I myself am quite interested in gym and wanted to make a documentary on gym, so i asked people if they would be interested in watching a documentary about gym, and 24 responses out of 30 was a yes.










Before question 11 i asked the questionnaire takers a few more question on gym and if they had already go to the gym, and how often they attend gym if so. Its very unfortunately to know that not many of them attends a gym, however when i asked them if they have considered on going most of the answers were positives and most said yes.











In doubts why so many people do not go to the gym i have asked another question to know the main reason. So the reasons to not attend gym varies from having no motivation, no funds, no time, no need, and no gym nearby.

What is audience research?
Audience research is defined as any communication research that is conducted on specific segments to gather information about their attitudes, knowledge, interests, preferences, or behaviours with respect to prevention issues. (Audience data, audience profiling, demographics, geodemographics, consumer behavior, consumer attitudes, audience awareness).

What is production research?
This is a research which must be done before carrying a media production in order to know if it will be possible to finish the production. This means researching the viability, cost, income, technology resources, personnel and also locations.

What is  market research?
The information gathered from market research helps budding entrepreneurs make wise and profitable business decisions. This research is very helpful as it gathers information about the target markets or customers.


Data Gathering Agencies:

BARB is simply a short word for broadcaster's audience research board. BARB is the official source of television viewing figures in the UK. They continually develop new ways of measuring what people in the UK are watching.

Here is a list of channels that barb are responsible for:

As you can see many of those channels are the main channels people watch on their day to day basis, it is very likely that you are also an audience of BARB.

RAJAR, again another short word with a big meaning and responsibilities. RAJAR stands for Radio Joint Audience Research. This is owned by the BBC and the radio center, and it is the official body in charge of measuring radio audiences in the UK.
"There are currently approximately 310 individual stations on the survey and results are published every quarter."





Here is an example of RAJAR infographics (Taken on the 29/05/2014): 

Assessing data research:
Before the start of any production everyone should ensure they have chosen the apropriated research and distribution method to ensure the data delivered to the audience is validy and reliable.

What I mena by valid- 
Valid refers to the extent to which a measurement does what it supposed to do. Data need not only to be reliable but also true and accurate. If a measurement is valid, it is also reliable. But if is reliable, it may or may not be valid.

What I mean by reliable-
Reliability refers to the consistence, stability, or dependability of the data. Whenever an investigator measures a variable, he or she wants to be sure that the measurement provides dependable and consistent results. A reliable measurement is one that if repeated a second time will give the same results as it did the first time. If the results are different, then the measurement is unreliable.


Going back to my results gathered from my online survey, I would say that my survey was well distributed and the feedbacks was actually very impressive as most of my audience was quite interested the topic for my documentary despite most of them not know much about the topic.