Understand the Nature and Purposes of Research in the Create Media Industries

For all aspects of creative media production, research is fundamental. It is an essential starting point for any type of production, as it can be used to gather a range of information relevant content, assist with planning of logical and technical requirements and overall can determine the financial viability of future production.

There are many methods and types of research.

Primary research (or self-generated research) is research undertaken be oneself. This includes questionnaires and interviews, such as in this particular unit where I created two questionnaires and collected data about the audience, and found out what their opinions were of the posters. Primary research can also include test screenings and observations of the audience, also creating focus groups and having discussions about the film. Finding out audiences opinions can also be done by audience panels. Audience measurement panels measure how many people are in an audience, usually for television and radio (but also readers for magazine and newspapers, or even web traffic on websites). An example of an audience panel is from BBC Northern Island where you can ‘make your voice heard’ and share your opinion. Self-generated material includes any own material, such as videos, audio or any photographic records of an event which you can then analyse.

Secondary research is using other people’s research from resources from the Internet, books/journals, film archives and photo libraries.  You can also get research from organisations that publish statistics and data, such as BARB. Internet sources include websites such as IMDB, which is an example of a website I used a lot to gather research of the film ‘Up’ and ‘9’ for this unit of work. I also used a book called the FDA Guide, which is another example of secondary research I used, as I extracted information from this guide, and researched about distributing and marketing plans. 

Primary and secondary research is used in the media industry. With primary research, in the professional industry, when films are near finished they can test screen the film and receive feedback from the audience and find out how they can improve or change the film to try and overall make it more successful. This is a positive as you can find out exactly how the audience react and what the audience likes, a negative of this though is that you can only find out feedback from an audience that like the genre of the film and not from a general audience which may effect the overall popularity of the film. 
With secondary research, this can be used in the professional industry when, for example, with companies such as BARB. If production companies want to release a new show, for example, they can look at the data and figures and find out what previous shows have done well and how and why they are popular. They can look at these shows and use this information to try and make this new show more successful. Some negatives of secondary research is that the data may not be exactly what you need, and overall may not be entirely useful.

Apart from primary and secondary research, there is also quantitative and qualitative research.

Quantitative research is results data which is concerned with numbers, fixed categories and amounts, and it can be expressed numerically without problems. For example, this can include audience figures, box office takings or even the number of hits on a website. These results are often collected by closed questioning in questionnaires. I produced some quantitative data as I included many closed ended questions in my questionnaires and I then merged these results together and produced graphs showing the data. An example of a question that I received quantitative data from is this question from survey monkey. 

Qualitative research is unlike quantitative research, as it is data which cannot be expressed numerically, and they are usually questions which are open ended. Questions such as “Why do you like this film?” is an example, as you cannot show these results numerically. Many of my questions in my questionnaires were like this, so I could see opinions about an original poster and a poster I created, and I could see clearly why the audience said the answers they did.  A lot of qualitative data is shown in film reviews and blogs, and can also include attitudes towards news stories, responses to adverts etc. 
An example of a question from one of my surveys that was qualitative research is this.

There are many data gathering agencies such as BARB, RAJAR, IMDB, and Box Office Mojo. Data gathering agencies are generally agencies that gather data and figures for television and radio. They collect the data and it represents viewing/listening data of the audience. 

BARB (The Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board) provides weekly UK audience figures for television, providing figures weekly. BARB commissions specialist research companies to collect data (companies include Kantar Media and RSMB) that represents the television viewing behaviour in over 26 million TV households in the UK. This links to audience measurement panels as BARB would use this to record how many people there are in the audience, which is useful as this is how they can collect the data they provide. This is because they are showing practically how many people are watching shows on television. 

 

RAJAR stands for Radio Joint Audience Research and is in charge of measuring radio audiences in the UK. It is owned jointly by the BBC and the Radio Centre, and there are currently around 310 individual stations.

IMDB is an online database (which is currently the worlds most popular) with TV, movie and celebrity content. Box Office Mojo is similar to IMDB, but is the most comprehensive box office database on the Internet. 

Audience and market research includes the audience data, where you find out the demographics and psychographics of the audience. This collection and analysis of research will help the production be aware of their audience and this will therefore help the product compete with other products.The purpose of audience and market research is so you can find out the audience and improve and make your product more successful and professional. 

Demographics are the gender, age, race, class (picture below)

and religion of an audience and this is also the geodemographics- are results providing information about where a person lives and their area. Basically asking questions like “are you male or female?” or “what is your age?” are examples. This can be useful for research as you can find out your audience and who you are aiming your product at specifically. 

The psychographics of the audience includes everything which a person is possible to change, such as their consumer attitudes and behavior. This also includes subcultures, which is a group of people within a culture having certain beliefs. This includes groups such as punk, Goth, Emo etc. 
While demographics are helping with knowing generally who your audience is, psychographics really helps with understanding exactly who your audience are, as you can see what they are interested in and what they like. Knowing these interests, this can allow you create a product targeted correctly at the audience and include content that is relevant to their likes and interests. 

There are many purposes of research, and this includes research for the production. This is called production research, which overall helps plan the product. This therefore means finding out the cost/finance for the production, the location and the personnel.  This helps with knowing what sort of content the film should have, the placement media for the film and the viability.  I have completed production research myself in the past as I have found out the cost/finance for a production, I have done location scouting and recces and I have also managed to get a list of personnel (and this includes making them fill out talent release forms etc.) which is all included in pre-production which I have completed before in the depict project.

When assessing results data you should remember validity, reliability and representativeness and generalisability.

Validity means getting truthful and honest results from the audience, as people are not always honest with their answers. People often say what the researcher wants to hear, and therefore they lie and don’t take it seriously.

Reliability is repeating the tests under certain (same and different) to test accuracy and reliability. During this unit, I have made sure my results are reliable as during the audience research I have compared two questionnaires by creating graphs.

Representative and generalisability is making sure that there is a true picture of the target audience. This means that audience measurement panels are important. Knowing how many people there are in an audience makes sure you get accurate results.