The Nature and Purposes of Research in the Creative Media Industries

Primary Reaearch/Sef-generated Research

Primary research
Primary research is a collection of the original data gained by the researcher using questionnaire, interview, survey etc. The data collection could either be quantitative and qualitative; depending on whether you use closed/open questions, both give different advantages.


 I created a questionnaire with 7 important questions to produce primary data for the small project, this is to be more sure of the interest in my topic and to get the ideas of how effective my project is by handing it out to the students in my college around the ages of 16-18, teachers, my parents and my friend's parents. My documentary was going to be about the Seagull theatre in Lowestoft and so i wanted to find out if this would be the topic of interest for a documentary.
The examples for my questionnaires are; Have you ever heard of the theatre group for people with learning disabilities at the Seagull theatre in Lowestoft? (People with learning disabilities who act in the theatre). How interesting is this topic in your own view?

Secondary research or desk research
Secondary research is a method of collecting data that already exists, it's a techniques used specially when performing market research. This is a useful method as it allows the researcher to come up with a new topic while doing their research. The form of data collected for this could be quantitative or  qualitative depending on the source you get it from. However, you must be very careful when using this method as certain specific data could not be accurate. The example of methods used for this is when you search for certain subject on the Internet, books or any other type of data in a written form of information.   


My secondary research is to do with other community theatre for people with disabilities in England. I also did the research to see if there is a similar community as the Seagull theatre in Lowestoft by using the Internet and found that there are quite a lot of these community theatres in the capital of England, London. These community theatres mostly are run by government funding to help those people with associated communication, confidence and memory problems. I also did the research on a similar documentary on YouTube, looking at shots, music and the layout of scenes to help me to understand certain techniques that work very well in this certain documentary style.

Quantitative research
The quantitative data is a data that is measured on a numerical scale, it can be analysed by statistical methods, the result is usually shown by graphs, histograms, charts or tables which means quantitative research is for the numerical measurement. This can be used in the market or the audience research to find out how many people or markets that are interested in the specific products. qualitative research can be done by either primary or secondary research.

The primary quantitative data I produced was from my questionnaire because I created it using closed questions. This is to keep my data in order and not take risks for my questionnaire's questions to be queried by the respondent. I also went on Chanel 4 and BBC3 to look at how many hours do documentaries show in a week and both have a similar percentage of the hours shown.


Qualitative research
Qualitative data is data that doesn't present itself in the numerical or statistic form; it's usually in the form of conversation or narrative. The qualitative data can be an opinion from the respondent which mean it's a wide open data collected from every point of view and can’t be satisfied. However if you are only investigating small areas or topics like "what people think about a specific film" you will collect a lot of in depth information and opinions from many points of view. This method can be use with focus groups e.g. Test Screening to see whether they could/should change anything in the film that they dislike by the investor before they put it on the market. One of the example for this is "I AM LEGEND", the movie changed the ending of the film.

I am legend (1st ending)

 

I Am Legend (2nd ending)

As one of the BTEC media students I get to watch a few of the documentary films to look at what type of documentary there are, for example, observational documentaries, performative documentaries and reflexive documentaries. I also get to watch some of the second year's 3 Minute Wonder projects which is the same project that I’m about to be doing. As one of my BTEC media's course work pieces I have to analyse 3 different videos on the topic of 3 Minute Wonder documentaries.

Audience and Market research
Audience research is taking place to find out if a specific group would be interested in your products. After the research, the products can be taken further development such as cream production for women will need an advert that can appeal to the group that you are targeting.
Market research is a research to see whether the products will be accepted, this could also link to age, gender, location and culture. The way the media present the product must be accepted by the target audience to be successful, which mainly relates to culture (certain things are excepted in certain culture and location but not in another culture). Next if the advertisement has been made (if referring to the media industry, it would be the trailer of the film), you must chose the right channel or advertise between certain programmes that will appeal to the target audiences. This also includes time and the day of the week. e.g. Ironman should be advertised in between other sci-fi fantasy/hero movies. Market research also helps establish a reason why the products are not selling to one particular demographic but selling to another. As the film  is going to be released at a specific time e.g. begging of the summer but there is a lot of the same catteries, the company may have waited and find a different time to release it. 


As my topic of documentary is one of the individual ideas, it's not something that has the biggest share of interest by the public, unlike tattoo, gun, art or music. So, the market for this kind of documentary is not very big. I mostly collected the data by questionnaires that I gave out to friends, teachers etc. The secondary data I collected is from the Internet by doing the research on the similar type of documentary. From the results I found that I can target those who have those with disability in the family.

 

Production research

The production research is where you organise everything that are needed in order to starts and completed the film e.g. location, time/days and also the cost of travelling, crew etc. This may includes;  talking to the head office of the specific place where you are going to be filming, the person you may need to be in the film and the expert on specific subjects.

The Seagull theatre is a local theatre in the Lowestoft where I live so the cost of travelling during filming is nothing. The research distance in miles and other sources e.g. bus time table is not needed because I know exactly where it is. I also talked to the organisation a few week before I started to make my mind up on the project.

 

Reliability
A reliability is very important to the products, this relate to the markets and the audiences research which is highly effect to the production e.g. you have to make sure that the data that are gained from the research are correct. This can be done by choosing to used the suitable method e.g. questionnaire, interview, observation etc. Then carried out to different age, group and location to get the wider range of audiences and interest from a different groups. The question that are given out must to be suitable for the topics (sensible), (you will more likely gains the trustful information when it's an anonymous questionnaire than with names as certain topic could be come an embarrassment to the those who taking part in questionnaire e.g. how many hours you spend watching pornography per week). The questions must have to be easy to understand especially when it come to questionnaire as the people could get confused and not bothered with it. One of the most trustful data that are gained are usually from interview questionnaire (you could explain an in depth detail to those who are taking port in it). However, this method take a lot of time and could cost too.
 

My primary research (questionnaire) produces 7 main sources of the important data which is age, gender, hours of documentary they watch per week and the interest in my project. This is for me to be able to analyse and maintain the result of the data, to find out what age or gender who are more interested in this topic. One of the questions in my questionnaire is about how interesting is this topic,  about people with learning disability and the respondent might feel bad of give a Lowscore for interest in the questionnaire. However I covered this by explaining to the respondents what the data will be used for. On my secondary research I have to be aware of the bias of each individual video I watch and also any bias in my questionnaire or from the respondents.

Validity
To be able to gains your data validly you will need a well plan sources and methods. This mean you must to state out what you wanted to know to the those who is taking part in your research (primary research). The secondary research sources are very useful to get trustful data and find out what you wanted to know and it's also easy to do . However, realisable source are needed in requirement.
 

As I am quite aware of the words I used in the questionnaires and by explaining to the respondents why this research is taking place, so, most of the people I asked to do the questionnaire are taking their time and answering it carefully; and I believe they are being honest and serious. As my questionnaire is a closed questionnaire and there are only 7 questions to be answered this does not open the gap for them to be questioning; in this way I won’t have to take the research any farther. However my primary research are not enough to gained a trust ful data as it have only given out 20 of them but i believe my secondary research is useful as it get it from a relisable source e.g. BARB website.

Data gathering agencies

Broadcaster's Audience Research Board is an organisation that compiles the audience measurement and the TV ratings in the UK. It's created to replace the previous system know as JICTAR, where the ITV and BBC created their own ratings.