Unit: 3 Research Techniques for the Creative Media Industries and Factual Radio Podcast: January 2014

Research Techniques for the creative media industries

In this essay I will be looking into three areas of researching in the media: Audience research the collection and analysis of a target audience or a media product, Marketing research is the collection of and analysis of information about the market that a particular product will be part of, that will compete with other products for an audience and revenue. Production research is the analysis of a product content and production of a media product, using primary and secondary methods as well as quantitative and qualitative research techniques.

Types of Research

Quantitative Research

Quantitative research is based on information that can be measured and calculated to produce numerical data. This type of information can be sourced from the BARB television viewing figures, RAJAR Radio listening figures and box office takings. As quantitative research is numerical based the data is most often seen in table and charts. The aim of Quantitative research is to quantify data into statist models, so what data has been collected can be explained and presented. When companies set out to bring a new product on the market, quantitative research allows them to see and compare viewing figures of their target audience by using site such as the Broadcaster’s Audience Research Board (BARB). This would be very useful for the advertisers so they then know whom they can target and what audience would be intrigued by it. Also they would then know if their product has a chance of being successful within the market niche.

Qualitative Research0.

Qualitative research is based on people’s opinion, views and preferences. Qualitative data is important to the media industry because it finds out what an individual or a group of people think about a certain product. Qualitative research is presented in text form and can be found online, in books and journals. McQueen & Knussen states, “Qualitative research approaches explores and describes, explains and predicts” this quote further suggests how qualitative research can help gain a further insight into their topic due to the detail they can receive from this type of research. McQueen is also saying qualitative data, text based research can be shown to describe a person opinion and can be written to a set of catered questions such as a questionnaire with open questions rather than closed, this would provide you with more in depth detail answers.

Methods and Sources of Research

Primary Research

Primary research is conducted by a researcher to obtain new results by using techniques such as interviews, surveys and questionnaires to find out what the public think. To collect the primary data, a company in the media industry will use field research to gather information that didn’t exists previously to the beginning of the project, possible methods they could use are:

Face to face interviews- Interviewer asks a series of questions on the specific area of research.

Questionnaires- are sent out to a selection of people to give a broad amount of data and ask specific questions with closed type answers to gain information

Online surveys- can be done by email or online and is similar to a questionnaire allowing large amount of people to give feedback

Focus groups- small groups of people meet with a repetitive of the company to answer in-depth questions of a specific area, normally used with TV programs and new products to market

The benefit of using primary research is all of the information collected is up to date meaning the data collected is the most accurate, it also allows for the researchers to collect data that is specific to the project.

Secondary Research

Secondary research is research that already exists, McQueen & Knussen says” the scope of secondary data will often exceed what the individual might achieve on their own” this means the information collected by organisations and other researchers in the past, will be academically rated higher than your own research. Articles, books, journals, archives and information located on the internet are all examples of secondary research sources.

Purpose of Research

Audience Research

Audience research collect and analysis the target audience for a media product, target audiences can be categorises by a varied amount of sub-groups such as age, gender and class. The National Readership Survey came up with the Class grade from A to E depending on your work title, skill and income for example grade C1 means you have got a supervisory or clerical job, junior manager or administrative professional. The National Readership Survey wanted to get rid of the generalised upper, middle and lower class stereotypies to replace it with a more accurate scale; media companies use this to gain a greater understanding of their audience. The capital a person has also gives them a unique target audience

Social- Your standings in the community. e.g. A Doctor would have a high social equity

Cultural- Standing in a group with a similar interested. e.g. Rugby Max Boyce

Financial- The amount of money or assets you have. e.g. shop owner would have assets in the stock

Educational- The qualifications you gained, further education and where you studied e.g. A lawyer who studied at Cambridge

Market Research

The TV market place is highly competitive, producers with in the industry need to gain highly detailed research about a potential target audience and other competitor with programs on the market, a specialised company would undertake the research by conducting a range of both primary and secondary research, for example online questionnaire is a great way of gaining specific information as its pre-planned, catering the questions to the research at hand, this type of research gives the producer an idea of both the target audience and who his competitors are, it will also identify what the target market wants and what the potential is, so they don’t waste time, effort, resources or money to produce a low potential program. another key tool will be accessing previously conducted information online or from competitors that have published findings like the website BARB, Broadcaster’s Audience Research Board as it’s a secondary method, the website will tell them the viewing figures of or most programs watched, this will allow them to compare viewing figures of competitors, allowing them to analyse the quantitative data to find out the best suited time to broadcast to gain the most audience views.

Production Research

Production research looks into the content of a certain product, such as identifying what resources would be needed in order to launch the chosen media product. Both quantitative and qualitative research can be gained by further then identifying what finance would be needed in order to help the certain product evolve. The reviews posted on IMDB gives the researcher a qualitative response as it is text based, quantitative data is collected via the star rating out of ten for each film, that has be collected by the members voting and an average mean is collected. Secondary research would be needed to be collected in order to identify what resources would be needed. In addition to this, primary research would then be put in place in order to complete recce’s, recce’s include an observation which is visual prior to the event. An example of production research is risk assignments; this then provides any possible risks that could further then harm in anyway an individual. IMDB would also provide production research as they can then go onto the website and research a specific film in which they want, this would then provide them with data which allows them to recognise whether the film ect is successful by viewing the box office take ins ect. The data collected for radio broadcast would consist of more primary research in the form of Interview, T.May says” Tape recordings can assist interpretation as it allows the interviewer to record the non- verbal gestures of the interviewee during the interview” this means the interviewer can convey the body language of the interviewee while the recording is played, allowing the audience to gain a greater understanding in the way the interviewee is behaving.

Bibliography

May.T(2002) Social Research. Open University Press, Buckingham

McQeen and Knussen (2002) Research Methods for Social Science, an introduction. Prentice Hall. London

Websites

Xavier University (2012) Qualitative versus Quantitative research available at http://www.xavier.edu/library/help/qualitative_quantitative.pdf date accessed 2013-10-03

Ipsos Media CT (2009) Social Grade a Classification Tool http://www.ipsosmori.com/DownloadPublication/1285_MediaCT_thoughtpiece_Social_Grade_July09_V3_WEB.pdf date accessed 2013-10-03

Unit: 3 Research Techniques for the Creative Media Industries and Factual Radio Podcast

Tuesday, 28 January 2014

Welcome

Wednesday, 22 January 2014

Unit: 3.1 Research Techniques for the creative media industries

Tuesday, 21 January 2014

Unit: 3.2 BARB Views BT Sport Rugby tonight

Unit: 3.2 BARB Six Nations 2013

Tuesday, 7 January 2014

Unit 3.2 Rajar Viewing Figures Talk Sport

Thursday, 2 January 2014

Unit: 3.2 Rajar Viewing figues Radio 5 Live