The nature and purposes of research in the creative media industries.

The nature and purposes of research in the creative media industries.

Primary Research:
Primary research is research that is gathered yourself, for example: Interviews, surveys and questionnaires. For my documentary, we interviewed numerous people about the subject of our documentary, which was tattoos. And we sent out a survey for our whole class to answers, in which we got answers and information off that. An advantage of primary research is that primary research has more reliability as you have gone out and collected the research yourself, so you can trust the information. A disadvantage would be that there is limited info you can gather. Here are a few examples of primary research from our survey:

Secondary Research:

Secondary Research is research that is collected from other existing pieces of work. For example: going onto the internet and gathering data off websites, this counts as secondary research as the website already as information on it and you are taking data from it. For our secondary research, we used websites like Wikipedia to get a general overview of tattoos and their history and looking at the different types of tattoos there are. An advantage of secondary research would be that there is a lot of different info available, especially on the internet. And a disadvantage for secondary research would be that the info that you gather is not going to be as reliable and you cannot always trust anything you obtain off the internet.  Examples of this would be: 

Quantitative Research:

Quantitative Research is research and data that is collected and gathered in numbers. For example: things like programme ratings, hits on a website, box office figures and sales on CD's and DVD's. Quantitative data is a lot easier to understand as at a quick glace you can clearly see what the dtata or info is showing. However you will not be able to get worded info out of this, that would be a disadvantage. Part our survey that we had created and sent out to our class is classed as quantitative research, for example: 

This is quantitative research as there is a percentage mark on the total of responses at the bottom.

Qualitative Research:

Qualitative Research is worded data. An example of qualitative data would be: Film reviews, game reviews, attitudes to media products, responses to news coverage, responses to advertising campaigns and discussions. Qualitative research is great for gathering information on knowing what went well on a certain project and gaining other peoples feedback on how you could do better. Although sometimes all of the worded data could be difficult to understand and will take longer to read. For my documentary our qualitative research was our survey, we put questions in that had to be answered using sentences. Here are some examples:

Data Gathering Agencies:

Data Gathering agencies are companies that collect an abundance of data and put it online. For example: IMDb is a website that collects data about films, the people who are involved in making the film, and even the the actors who play in the film, and put that info on their website so people can read about it. BARB is the organisation that compiles audience measurement and television rating in the UK. BARB will register houses which are more commonly known as 'panel houses' and in every one of those houses there is a meter that is attached to the TV and electronic devices. Because not everyone has a meter in their TV there are certain people who are representatives of the UK's viewership. This allows BARB to know who is watching what at any time during the day.  Here is an example of BARB: 

Audience and Market Research:

Audience research is data that is collected from a certain group of people or an audience. For our documentary we had to audience and market research. An example of audience research would be our survey that we had sent out. The whole purpose for this is to get advice and feedback from the general public and your peers to know what to do better and know how to improve anything. And to even more ideas. In our advertising unit, we had to re-brand a product from Unilever. And we had to do a re-branding pitch in which we would show our idea to the class, and then after we were given feedback and advice. Getting feedback and getting people to answer the survey is audience research.

Market research is gathering info and data from other peoples research that has already been conducted and put online. For our documentary we only had audience research.

Production Research:

Production Research is research to help give information on the characteristics of the product. In terms of production research there wasn't too much to take into consideration. The documentary was made to be placed in between a show in channel 4. It did not cost anything to make but if any equipment was to be damaged we would have to pay for the damage done, thus it would have cost a lot. The only technological resources used were our filming equipment which was a camera and a tripod. We had a few people in our documentary, all of which were interviewed. Finally, the documentary was shot in 2 locations, my home, and at a tattoo studio. Here is an example of the talent release that had to filled in, so we could continue.