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3.1 Understand the nature and purpose of the research in the creative media industries

BTEC Level 3 in Creative Media Production

3.1 Understand the nature and purposes of research in the creative media industries.

In this essay I will be discussing the advantages and disadvantages of research techniques, explaining what it is they are, how they're useful to researchers and how reliable each source is.  I will be using quotes from researchers to support my views and opinions about each research technique; the techniques will be Quantative, Qualitative, Primary, and Secondary.

Types Of Research:

Quantative is research that gives you numerical information through various research methods. In example researchers use surveys to find out how the public feel about a specific issue, the information is then gathered up and put into graphs. Bar charts etc. This is so that the researcher can recognise any patterns or occurring issues. Information gathered may be useful to market research companies like BARB in which they use viewing figures specify what television programmes have the most viewers on a weekly basis. Researchers may feel that quantitative research is a reliable source because the viewing figures are updated on a regular basis to get an accurate reading, in order to support this theory. 

Qualitative research consists of an analysis of any structured data this includes open-ended survey responses, literature reviews, audio recording, semiotics etc. This is useful for interviews because the researcher is receiving the information for themself so it'll be 100% reliable and is also may fall under the Primary or Secondary research technique, however this may be very reliable but you may get irrelevant information that doesn't really have anything to do with the topic the researcher is trying to find out about. Pole and Lampard (2002) "Structural questions which invite the interviewee to explain how things happen", Pole and Lampard  are saying if you use closed questions in an interview, then the interviewee will provide an answer that will only answer with the information required, for example in an interview with Louis Theroux he uses closed question to gain specific answers which will aid him with research. 

Primary research is a most reliable research technique, as the researcher gains information personally with interviewees in example an in-depth interview is conducted in this way. An in-depth interview consists of open questions in order to gain information from the answers the interviewee has explained, this information is useful to the interviewer as they may take note on the importance of each open question bringing forward the relevant information. It’s often used in an everyday life such as when applying for a job an interview is always in order, the interviewer will find out about the interviewee’s life, experience in other jobs, and ask questions based on the work ethic. May. T (2002) “Semi structured interviews are said to allow people to answer more on their own terms than the standardized interview permits”.  May.T is saying that in a semi structured interview the interviewee is able to share information that they feel is relevant and on there own terms, in example when in a job interview the interviewee may be asked how much their previous job was paying them but its the interviewee's choice whether or not to provide that information for the interviewer.

Secondary research is information gathered by people that publish their views and opinions online or in books; the issue with this method is that researchers may have a biased opinions.  However this method may be an advantage if it was to be used if looking for some historical data perhaps, because Archive footage can be a reliable recourse. In example RAJAR is an online website in which consists of how many listeners a radio station has at a particular date and is up to date as it gets updated every week to make the results more reliable. McQueen and Knussen (2002) “The scope of secondary data will often exceed what the individual might achieve on their own” this means that the secondary research is useful because it takes less time to find the information you need and its quicker than using Primary research because some information may be difficult to get a hold of. To elaborate BBC show many different documentaries and they often use archive footage when talking about the history of a town, which is a way of showing how the town has changed from then and now.

Audience research is collected and analysed to target a type of audience for a media product,  target audiences can be categorised by their social class, gender, age and profile awareness. The National Readership survey uses grades from A to E, which means it depends on your working title, skills and income in example C1 means you have a supervisory or clerical job, administrative or junior managerial position. BARB is another example of a method of audience analysis because they use the viewing figures from specific channel stations which will allow Market researchers to advertise media products to their target audiences. ITV have a reality TV show called TOWIE (The Only Way Is Essex) which is aimed at an audience of the ages 15-30+ and preferably aimed at women so the advertisements in between breaks will be of media products preferably women will want in example tanning lotions as TOWIE's reality stars influence the audience to have a bronzed tan because the reality stars have the look. 

Marketing research is finding out what it is exactly the audience are interested in; what their likes and dislikes are, in example the RAJAR surveys are used to find out how many listeners each radio has, so this means that market researcher could use the RAJAR website to find out which radio is the most popular radio station. This will help them with the competition to find out what there listeners prefer. So if a researcher wanted to find out which is the most popular radio station they would find out it is BBC Radio 2 with a reaching percentage of 29%.

Production research is basically all the issue that are put into creating a product, which are facilities, financial, location, length of time, and copyright. So if a product were to use a brand name or image in which was copyrighted then the product may not make it to advertisement, as it is illegal to use copyrighted imagery or branding title. This could cause a large effect to the companies time management as it would delay the set deadline.

Bibliography

www.BARB.co.uk

Haralambos & Holborn (2008) Seventh Edition Sociology

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

McQueen and Research Methods for Social Sciences, an introduction. Prentise Hall. London.

Pole and Lampard (2002) Practical Social Investigation. Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in Social Research. Prentice Hall, London 

www.RAJAR.co.uk