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Pa t r i c k b e rr y: re s e a rc h t a s k , ro u n d 2

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Importance of
research before
Producing
By
Patrick Berry

Contents

Pa t r i c k b e rr y: re s e a rc h t a s k , ro u n d 2
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Types of research
Page 3-4
Quantitative
Qualitative
Methods of research
Page 4-6
Primary
Secondary
Data Gathering agencies
Self-generated
Purpose of Research
Page 6-7
Audience research
Market research
Production research
Bibliography
Page 8

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Types of Research
Quantitative
Quantitative data relating to the measuring of something in quantity. For
example if you wanted to find out which were better Marvel or DC, you
would ask a numerous amount of people (the more the better) and get
their single worded opinion on which is better Marvel or DC. So maybe at
the end you have 67 people say Marvel and 33 people say DC. This is
what we call quantitative data, no opinion, no explanation, just a simple
one word answer. In the end giving the researcher numerical data.
Benefits of using quantitative data; firstly it allows you for a broader
study, involving a greater number of subjects, enhancing the
generalisation of the results. Secondly it can allow for greater objectivity
and accuracy for results. Generally quantitative methods are designed to
provide summaries of data that support generalisation about the study.
Using standards mean of research usually involved few variables and in
many cases employs prescribed procedures to ensure validity and
reliability. The research found can be replicated, and then analysed with
similar studies Kruger (2003) confirms that quantitative methods allow us
to summarize vast sources of information and facilitate comparisons
across categories and over time. Finally personal bias can be avoided by
researchers keeping a distance from participating subjects and employing
subjects unknown to them.
However there are some downsides to using quantitative data, firstly
results are limited as they provide numerical descriptions rather than
detailed narrative, providing less elaborate accounts of human perception.
The research carried out is usually in an unnatural, artificial environment
so that a level of control can be applied to the research. This level of
control might not normally be in place in the real world yielding laboratory
results opposed to real world results. In addition to this statement pre-set
answers might not necessarily reflect how people really feel about a
subject and in some cases might just be the closest match.
Qualitative
Qualitative data is typically descriptive data and as such is harder to
analyse than quantitative data. Qualitative research is useful for studies at
the individual level, and to find out in depth the ways in which people

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think or feel. The benefits of using qualitative data is that you can provide
a lot more depth and detail into your findings. You can analyse ranks and
counts by recording attitudes, feelings and behaviours. Secondly
qualitative data creates openness, it encourages people to expand on
their responses, opening up new topic areas which may not have
necessarily been considered. It simulates people individual experiences, a
detailed picture can be built up about why people act in certain ways and
their feelings about these actions. Finally if you use this alongside
quantitative data, it can explain why a particular response was given.
However there are some problems that you could face with using
qualitative research. Firstly theres usually a lot less people studied. It is
usually a lot more time consuming meaning that unless you have more
time, staff and budget you are most likely going to have a smaller sample
size. Secondly its less easy to generalise, because fewer people are
usually studied its not possible to generalise results to that of the
population. It can be hard to create systematic comparisons, for example
if, people give widely differing responses that are highly subjective, you
wont be able to find a comparison between the answer. Seeing as
qualitative data is usually carried out in interviews, focus groups or
observations, it can be dependent on how good the researcher is at
conducting these pieces of research. The data collected is only going to be
as good as the researcher.
For example if we talk about who are better again Marvel or DC unlike
quantitative data we want the peoples elaborated opinion, qualitative
data doesnt want a one word answer they want a reason why. Qualitative
data is usually carried out in a 1 to 1 interview, focus groups or
observations.
Methods of Research
Primary
Primary research is information that has been found or created for the first
time by the researcher. This includes material found in; observations,
interviews with people, reports of meetings/ discussion with people, the
collection of information from questionnaires or surveys and finally focus
groups.
It is very easy to conduct primary research, all you need to do is go to is
find a group of people, ask some unbiased, reliable questions and theres
your primary research. You can do what you want youre not restricted in
anyway, you can do surveys, over the phone surveys, mail surveys, face
to face surveys, and so many more. Primary research can be quick, easy
and cheap. You dont need have the biggest budget to get reliable
generalizable data. You not have as big a sample size but you can still get
factual data. Finally you can get specific answers that you want to know.
You can keep the answers simple and easy like yes or no. This makes
it a lot easier to collect vast amounts of data.
Some problems that you could face when conducting primary research is
that it can be time consuming. It may be easy to complete primary

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research, but you cant get out the fact that it will take time to create the
questions you want to do, it will take time to find people you want to
interview/use in your research. You may not get accurate results that you
were looking for. Seeing as primary research is opinionated, your final
results could completely contradict what youre beginning evaluation was
looking for, making your research invalid or useless. Finally if you planning
on doing primary research on a wide scale, by the time you finish the data
collection it could be out of date, being either unreliable or simply out of
date. This could mean that the whole time youve spent on conducting
this research would have been wasted.
An example of primary data would simply be giving a questionnaire to a
number of people asking a specific question. All the research you collect
will be primary research seeing as you conducted it, you didnt use any
elses studies or information.
Secondary
Secondary research is information that has been found from others, which
you end up using in your research. The techniques used in secondary
research would be; referring to books, journals, magazines and
newspapers. Gathering information from the internet. Making notes on
information presented on audio, visual formats like DVDs or CDs, and
collecting information from CD ROMs.
The pros of conducting secondary research, like primary research it is
easy to access, all you information you need can be found on your
computer, in the library. It wont take long to get vast amount of
information. On that subject you are able to get a huge amount of data
from this research seeing as information you need can be quick to find it
can be very easy to get more than enough research to help you with your
studies. Finally it is often your only resource, so when you have your
findings your able to back up your data and make your conclusions that
more reliable.
Cons of secondary research would consist of; that you might not have all
the information you need. It may be easy to find a lot of information, you
might have found most of the information you need. However their maybe
one more study, one more piece of research that you needed to find and
just cant, so on this aspect it could end up being time consuming. The
information that you do find could end up being out of date. Especially if
youre looking for data over previous questionnaires the data that they
found could be 10 years out of date and end up being unreliable and
invalid towards your studies. Finally a lot of your research could be
unreliable. So when conduction your research you need to make sure that
the source youre getting it from is reliable and professional, again for
books you need to make sure that the books arent bias in anyway giving
you as much professional research as possible.
So an example of secondary research would be that youve conducted
some primary research and you want to find other researchers in the past
who have done similar or the same research who have come out with the

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same results. So all the information you find about other researchers
findings will be secondary research seeing as you didnt conduct the
research youre simply using it to help make your study more conclusive,
reliable and valid.
Data Gathering Agencies
A data gathering agency is an agency that collects data for various
different purposes with various different methods. Some of these methods
could include filling in surveys, taking part in interviews etc. this data can
be used in products in order to improve it or even for the government, it
really just depends what the purpose was.
The pros of using data gathering agencies is that you know the
information youre going to get is reliable and unbiased. This means that
all data you read can help you with your promotion of your product. Youll
be able to know who your main audience will be, know which county
enjoys the product most. All this will end up helping with your revenue,
and start getting you a bit of profit. However all of this can be quite costly.
It may help you and your business, however it will take a big chunk out of
your costs and so you may be struggling for a few months with money.
One of the main things you need to do is make sure youre financially
stable to get data gathering agencies. They will help you in the long run,
its just the short run you need to worry about seeing as if you dont
financially prepare you could go bankrupt wasting all your money on
youre a data gathering agency.
An example of a data gathering agency is R.A.J.A.R. theyre an
organisation that stands for radio joint audience research. It measures
radio audiences in the UK. The organisation uses dairy as a method to
measure radio audience, the data that they gather is the industry wide
currency for; planning advertising, buying advertising and selling
advertising on commercial radio.
Self-Generated
Self-generated research is provided on your own merits. This is research
that you create and have originality to it. Whether its a video you
produced yourself, this could simply see as your forms of media, however
it becomes self-generated research when youre looking back at your own
content for someone elses research.
An example of this would be a video production youve made which
becomes research once youre looking into elements of filming techniques
and shot types, so long as youre looking back at your own work.
The benefit of doing self-generated work is that it can learn a lot more
about a certain aspect like, filming techniques. Its able to help you with
understanding everything a lot more, and because youve created a film,
photographic record etc. you already know a lot of the work making it
easier for you to have conclusive reliable data. However the problems with
doing generated work is that it can take a lot of time to create. Its a very
good method of getting information you need in a later period, however it

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still is going to take a long time to create and produce, meaning you could
end up being behind of work that needs to be completed or a schedule
you were keeping to.
Purpose of research
Audience Research
Audience research is defined as any communication research that is
conducted on specific audience segments to gather information about
their attitudes, knowledge, interests, preferences or behaviours with
respect to prevention issues.
The benefits of doing audience research is that youre able to get
conclusive reliable data onto whatever youre researching. If you do
unbiased quantitative data then you that the data collected should help
you with your research and help proves a point in whatever youre trying
to conclude. Secondly it can be very easy to evaluate the data so again it
can be easy to help with your final conclusion. Completing audience
research youre able to get different views from a diverse audience. If you
do surveys then youre able to get a huge variety of data being able to
find a huge amount of conclusions all leading to help you with your
research.
However some problems you could face would be; bias, If you do a
questionnaire, interview, any form of research, theres going to be that
slight chance that you could be bias. You might ask persuasive questions
leading towards a certain area, same with the questionnaires. So the
research youve found wouldnt be able to be research, it would either
have to be scrapped or used as an opinion not fact. It can be time
consuming doing audience research, it can take time to find the vast
amount of people you may want, and then writing up all your findings you
found. This is all longing out your chance to show of your findings,
meaning that when its finished the data might be out dated and so
pointless.
Market Research
Market research is the collection and analysis of information about the
market within which the product will compete with other products for
audience revenue.
The pros of using market research is that your able to get statistical data
about the audience, so your able to know who your main target audience
are coming from and how you can improve your product to fit with that
audience. Secondly theres audience awareness of media product, this
helps the company increase their awareness and popularity for their
product, helping them understand who like their product and why on top
of that hopefully increasing their revenue. The company are able to
understand the attitudes towards products and services and pattern of
behaviour. This again is to help them with keeping their customers happy,
making sure that theyre happy with our product and are going to keep on
buying the product. Finally competitors. With market research the
company are able to keep an eye on competitors and make sure that

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theyre doing the best they so that the competitors dont do better than
and dont steal all of their business.
Doing market research can be costly, depending on what methods you
use. If you hire a company to conduct market research then this will be
very costly and a big risk. Also its not just cost you need to worry about, it
can be very time consuming as well. You need to schedule with the
employees questionnaires, interviews and examinations which arent
quick. This will affect the cost, seeing as the more time you spend on
market research the money may waste within the company. Finally there
might be limited volunteers. Market research his primarily based on
peoples opinions and views of a single product or service, the lack of
respondents may also be a negative factor for a companys market
research. The less people that fill it out the less reliable the data will be.
Production Research
Production research is conducted to inform the production process of a
media product for example back ground information, location, legal
requirements etc.
Pros from doing product research is that it provides content for the
product, this is so that everyone knows everything they need to know
about the product meaning there are financially and commercially stable
with the product. Secondly the company are able to research commercial
viability, meaning they can keep track of all the costs that will need to be
taken into account when promoting/creating this product. Finally the
business are able to plan the whole production process of product, where
it goes, who it goes to, how many times will it be distributed. One of the
main problems is that its very easy to over advertise where people will
get bored of them, so you will end up getting less customers and then
start losing profits.

Bibliography
http://thcvibeproductions.weebly.com/round-2.html
http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/quantitative-data.html
http://archive.learnhigher.ac.uk/analysethis/main/quantitative1.html

Pa t r i c k b e rr y: re s e a rc h t a s k , ro u n d 2
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http://archive.learnhigher.ac.uk/analysethis/main/quantitative1.html
http://georgiamediablogs.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/pros-and-cons-of-primary-andsecondary_06.html
http://www.slideshare.net/MrMightyMcD/research-unit-booklet
http://www.slideshare.net/mroper/research-techniques-in-the-media-industry?
related=1
http://www.slideshare.net/hblyth/audience-research-2822439
http://smallbusiness.chron.com/disadvantages-market-research-new-productdevelopment-23441.html
http://marketandproductionresearch.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/market-andproduction-research.html
http://www.slideshare.net/0\9SC1/data-gathering-agencies

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