The Nature and Purposes of Research

The Nature and Purposes of Research  

Primary research 

Primary research is a type of research that you conduct yourself, for example, interviews, questionnaires  etc. 

“Experiments, investigations, or tests carried out to acquire data first-hand, rather than being gathered from published sources.” – Business Dictionary. Primary research definition. http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/primary-research.html [accessed 11th July 2019] 

In my documentary task we made some surveys and handed then out to the public, this is a form of primary research because we gathered all the information ourselves.  We gathered this information because we wanted to know generally what people thought about teenage pregnancy and abortion (the topic of our documentary) so we could be more specific on what we focused it on. After this we created a list of questions to ask the people who were featuring in our video.

Documentaries almost always have a lot of primary research in them, for example any kind of interview in a documentary is primary research. A form of interviews is something called “vox pops” (voice of the people) this technique is where the interviewer goes out in public and asks random members of the public questions. This is almost like a video form of a questionnaire. -BBC. Recording vox pops https://www.bbc.co.uk/academy/en/articles/art20130702112136311 [accessed 17th December 2019] This i s a short video made by the BBC presented by Melanie Grant, an experienced journalist, focusing on important things to remember when recording vox pops.

Secondary research 

Secondary research is using information that other sources have gathered, this could be a book, a website etc. When using secondary research, it is important to reference where you got the information from. 

“Secondary research involves the summary, collation and/or synthesis of existing research. Secondary research is contrasted with primary research in that primary research involves the generation of data, whereas secondary research uses primary research sources as a source of data for analysis”-Wikipedia. Secondary research. https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Secondary_research [accessed 27^th August 2019] 

For the documentary task we watched documentaries before making our own to see the conventions and techniques that are often used in different types and styles of documentaries. To gather ideas about how to shoot ours. For example we watch Louis Theroux's Louis and the Nazis, this was a very interesting perspective on documentaries, it felt very personal, this helped us shape our own.


-Wikipedia. Louis and the Nazis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_and_the_Nazis [accessed 3rd January 2020]

If a company was shooting an historical film, they would have to research into making it historically accurate, to make sure they wouldn’t get anything out of place. Although it's made for children, Horrible Histories is a very good example of this, at its core it's an educational program so lots of research had to go into it.

 -Den of Geek. Horrible Histories: the 15 greatest songs. https://www.denofgeek.com/uk/tv/horrible-histories/53409/horrible-histories-the-15-greatest-songs [accessed 3rd January 2020]

Primary research and secondary research both have their pros and cons, they are both very useful in different contexts. Secondary research is very useful is you are researching an event that happened a long time ago (this would mean that it would be impossible to interview anyone). Whereas if it is a more recent event it would be a lot more emotionally impactful to get interview and get a first-hand account of someone who was there. QuestionPro. secondary research- definition, methods and examples. https://www.bbc.co.uk/academy/en/articles/art20130702112136311 [accessed 17th December 2019]

Quantitative research

Quantitative research Is how well something is received, how popular something is, e.g. box office figures, ratings etc. Things with numerical values. Something that can be used in graphs or tables. 

“Quantitative research gathers data in a numerical form which can be put into categories, or in rank order, or measured in units of measurement.  This type of data can be used to construct graphs and tables of raw data.”- Simply psychology.  What’s the difference between qualitative and quantitative research? https://www.simplypsychology.org/qualitative-quantitative.html [accessed 28^th August 2019]. 

For our advertising task we conducted a survey to collect feedback, although this is an example of primary research it is also an example of quantitative research because it can be made into graphs and tables. Collecting feedback was very helpful. We used a website called Survey Monkey, which is very useful because the website automatically puts the collected data into graphs and tables.

This kind of research is used a lot in marketing so they can gather figures and decided how to market something to reach a biggest audience. Quantitative research is also used a lot in different types of adverts. This is to make the product seem more appealing to the audience.
- YouTube. Trident 4/5 dentist commercial. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXqAyMhgc7I [accessed 3rd January 2020]. This advert for Trident is a good example of quantitative  data being used in media.

Qualitative research 

Qualitative research is people's opinions and responses to things, for example, reviews, responses to different forms of media etc. 

“Qualitative Research is primarily exploratory research. It is used to gain an understanding of underlying reasons, opinions, and motivations. It provides insights into the problem or helps to develop ideas or hypotheses for potential quantitative research.”-SnapSurveys. What’s the difference between qualitative and quantitative research? https://www.snapsurveys.com/blog/qualitative-vs-quantitative-research/ [accessed 29^th August] 

For our advert we sent out a survey to gather opinions. This was very useful to find out what we could improve or what we could’ve done differently.

a review is typically qualitative research. This is much more commonly used after a piece of media is complete to gather feedback. Adverts also use Qualitative data to promote products, companies will get people to share their opinions (usually positive ones) on their products for adverts. 
- YouTube. Colgate Dentist DRTV. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ULR68LTmbw [accessed 3rd December 2020]. This Colgate advert has many opinions from people who use this certain toothpaste.

Qualitative and quantitative research, in my opinion, are most useful when used together, it’s best to have both graphs and tables showing peoples general opinions but it is also useful to have more in depth written opinions. 

Data gathering agencies  

Data gathering agencies are companies that gather data and do various things with, some companies could make databases, some make ratings from the data they gather. 

BARB is the organisation that decides the different ratings for television in the UK. IMDB is an online database where you can find information about different films and TVs, video games, actors etc. blogger. 

Unit 3 Research techniques for the creative media industries. http://rhyspainter23.blogspot.com/2016/01/data-gathering-agencies.html [accessed 17th December 2019]

Audience and Market research 

Audience and market research are types of research media companies will do before creating a product or a piece of media. The purpose of these kinds of research is to fine tune the product or piece of media to a certain demographic, to maximise popularity. This could take place in many forms, surveys, vox pops, or maybe even polls posted on a social media sites. All could be useful in their own ways.

“Audience research is any research conducted on specific audience segments to gather information about their attitudes, knowledge, interests, preferences, or behaviours. For cultural organisations, audience research is often conducted on current visitors and past visitors”- colleendilenschneider. Audience vs. Market research. https://www.colleendilen.com/2016/06/08/audience-vs-market-research-a-critical-distinction-for-cultural-organizations/ [accessed 3^rd September] 

For the advert project we had to conduct market and audience research to make our advert as effective as possible. We watched many different adverts to get a feel of the different tones and themes used, to get a better idea of what we could use in our own. For example the 'Marmite neglect' Marmite advert was an advert we took into consideration. It was very different from our advert, it was very divisive, many people thought it was offence and not funny. So we knew when making our Marmite advert it needed to be more family friendly and less edgy.

-YouTube. End Marmite Neglect. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7R1TDZtNq9g [accessed 5th January 2020]

These kinds of research always happen before a media production starts. It's very important to conduct audience and market research to make sure you know who you're trying to appeal to, if you don't the the project could seem messy. Also if a company is trying to market to too many audiences at once it could seem convoluted and confuse the audience. An example of something that completely missed their audience is the 'baby' advert for play-station.
- YouTube. PS3 Baby commercial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqkNPcUMffU [accessed 3rd January 2020]

Production research 

Production research is research that must be conducted before a production is made. Things like finance needed to be researched to make sure everything is in budget, It's also useful to create story boards, shot lists etc. to get an estimate on how much the production will cost. Production research also includes location reccies, these are very important to carry out before a production because people need to make sure they are fit for shooting in, the also need to make sure they have all the correct permissions to be filming there. This all has to be accounted for in the budget.

“Production research is always needed when developing a new product. It is research to help give information on the characteristics of the product. It focuses on the production of a product, in other words, how it's made” slideshare. Audience, Market Research. https://www.slideshare.net/marleylong/audience-27055236 [accessed 3^rd September] 

For all of our projects that we’ve completed we’ve conducted production research. We have completed reccies for all of our filming locations and have gained permissions if necessary. For our depict project we made a list of all the costs so we knew exactly how much the project will cost. All of our projects were either free or very cheap so organising the budget was relatively simple.

For our depict project we created an extensive story board showing every shot in the project, this was very useful to have because we knew exactly what we were shooting and roughly what it should look like, this made it much easier to create a production schedule because we knew what we needed to shoot.

All professional productions will have to conduct market research to make sure they’re in budget. This is essential to make the project work, there have been many cases where the budget wasn't stuck to and as a result the movie/project failing. For example the 1995 film Cutthroat island was a train wreck of a production, after problems with the crew and many setbacks on set including raw sewage flooding a tank. This production ended up losing $105 million. Gizmodo. 13 movies that went disastously over budget. https://io9.gizmodo.com/13-movies-that-went-disastrously-over-budget-1737605750 [accessed 5th January 2020]. This is why taking all the potential costs into  account is very important.
-IMDb. Cutthroat Island. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112760/ [accessed 5th January 2020]