The Nature and Purposes of Research

Research

Why do we do research? Research is vital when making any type of media production, and especially for factual programming such as documentaries. It is very important to do research when making documentaries because you need to have a very particular and thorough understanding of the subject but also because you need to gather people’s opinions and facts upon the subject.

Primary research

Primary research is self-driven research into a chosen subject. This can consist of many things such as surveys and observations.

With my primary research I started off by creating a questionnaire on SmartSurvey. This is one of the most important pieces of all of my research as it gave me an insight into what people wanted to see in my documentary and what people’s views were. This is because I did mine on shooting, which can be quite a controversial subject. My survey consisted of 10 questions. These consisted of multiple choice and written essay boxes for people to voice opinions. They were a mix so that I could find out if the correct demographic was answering my questions as I was aiming it at teenagers. Another form of primary research I did was talking to my family about it as they are very involved with my chosen subject.

Secondary research

Secondary research is when you look into existing content upon a subject.

In terms of my secondary research I started off by looking online. I thought a good place to start would be the BASC website as this is the place that would have the most information about what I needed to find out. I looked at a few articles that were people’s opinions on pigeon shooting and what they liked about it, but I also looked at both sides of the argument so that I could get a wider understanding of the subject. When looking for information I also found at facts and figures that I could use in my documentary. An example of secondary research was discovering alternatives to shooting and what the rules and regulations for it were.

Quantitative research

Quantitative research is information that is found out containing fact and figures.

For my quantitative research I looked at documentaries as a whole. For example I looked at ratings for documentaries and what channels showed more than others. I found out that documentaries were a very popular genre and were viewed by millions of people. I fatherly looked at the popularity of the 3 minute wonders and its rating.

Qualitative research

Qualitative research is where you look into people’s opinions such as reviews.

For example I went on the IMDB website and looked into some reviews about 3 minute wonders to find out what people think of them but the main thing I did was look on YouTube and read some of the comments about what people thought about the videos. 

Data gathering

BARB is a prime example of a data gathering agency. BARB is the official agency for viewing figures for the UK.  By looking on the BARB website I found out the quantitative information about documentaries and their viewing figures. IMDB is the official website for almost all the ratings of media productions worldwide. They give a rating out of 10 and you can view people’s reviews on the production.

Audience and Market Research

Market research is made up of 3 different things, these include Quantitative, Qualitative and Hybrid, which is a mixture of the two. The reason that market research is carried out is to see what demographic would have a better acceptance to your media product. You need to have very good background research backed by statistics in order to find out the best target audience. An example of Market research would be looking at competitors. Furthermore in this example look at how often documentaries are shown. As we are making 3 minute wonders I looked at how many documentaries are shown throughout the week on Channel 4. From this research I found there were a total of 20 documentaries throughout this 1 week period which tallied up to 15 hours and 50 minutes. This is a prime example of market research that I have carried out. This information can be obtained using BARB or TV schedules.

When I first thought about what my target audience would be I first though, what age group would be appropriate but yet would not have great knowledge of the subject. Furthermore I wanted them to be able to understand it. After thinking about this I decided it would be best if I aimed it at teenagers. This is because I could then relate to the audience that I am making it for. Also during my secondary research I found out some information about the ages of people who are into shooting as a whole. Within this article I found that there are far fewer younger people getting into it. For me I sore this as an opportunity to aim it at my own age group as there is a lack of young people with the knowledge. Overall I thought that my age group would be the best demographic to aim my documentary at. A professional example of this is 'Cloverfield'; they aimed this at Males between the age of 15 and 34. Another example of how this is done would be through film pre-release. By doing this they can find out what the audience like and don't like about the film and they can give input into what they want to change. For example in the new Batman film they had to re-edit the audio for Bane's voice s it was unclear and they couldn't understand everything he was saying.

Production research

Before I started to make my production thought about what equipment and what resources I would need in order to make it. For example I made a budget sheet as part of my pre-production. Furthermore I also researched into what would be the best locations to film at.

Validity and Reliability in data

Reliability in data is very important and which is why that if you ask multiple different people then you can get a more viable response and have more data to refer too. An example would be when I made my questionnaire; I made sure that I gathered at least 20 results so that I would have reliable data to go from. The majority of people took it very seriously and I was very happy with my response. I thought I would have trouble distributing it but I used Facebook and it went very well.

Overall I think I had some very valid data as on some of the last questions I asked for people’s opinions and what they would like to see in the documentary and so they would have an input into it. From these pieces of data I got some very good responses and valid data to go from. The reason that my data was valid is because of the way that I structured the questions.