The nature and purposes of research in the creative media industries

In this document I will be discussing different methods of research used in the creative media sector.

Primary Research
The first type of research that I will be discussing is primary research. This is where an individual or party will go and personally research a topic. An example of this would be a questionnaire where the

The questionnaire that I created to
perform primary research for my
documentary.

group creating a media text will send out a survey to a selection of people and gather responses so that they can better judge what their potential audience wants in a production. Another example of primary research that a company, or individual, in the media sector may decide to use is observation. This would be useful for productions that require research to be done about how people act for example as it allows the researcher to get the data without obstructing or interfering. For my 3 Minute Wonder (3MW) documentary production I used primary research in the form of a questionnaire and then sent to a large group of people. I managed to collect the results of ten different people and used the data gathered to decide which questions I would ask in the documentary.

Secondary Research
The second type of research I will be discussing is secondary research. This is where interested parties will use data and statistics collected by another person, such as another researcher or a company paid to research a certain area for a client. The interested parties involved may be people, like myself, who are creating documentaries or other pieces. This is usually a much easier way of

An interview I viewed as secondary
research.[1]

gathering the required information as it is much cheaper and a lot less time consuming as someone has already done the work. An example of secondary research would be books written about the topic, for instance if someone was making a documentary about cats they could read books written about the topic to gather information and use this in the documentary. Another example would be other videos in the same topic that you wish to create. For my production I watched other interviews with electronic musicians in order to decide what questions should be asked and which questions were common, and popular, in interviews of this nature. When creating my documentary I used interviews of other electronic musicians such as Joel Zimmerman (Deadmau5), Armin Van Buuren and Masters At Work (Louie Vega and Kenny Dope) to gather knowledge of what questions were common and therefore popular among the audiences, as their audience was similar to mine.

Quantitative Research

A quantitative question from my
questionnaire.

Quantitative research is research revolving around numerical data. An example of this could be star-ratings, for instance if a media company wants to see how popular comedy films are they could visit a website like Internet Movie Database (IMDB) and see what other people around the world thought of the film in a number rating. The way that I personally used quantitative data was in two of my primary questions, "What is your gender?" and "Would you be interested in watching a documentary on an electronic musician?". I used the data from the second question to evaluate whether this would be well received by my potential audience. Of my ten participants nine said they would.

Qualitative Research

My qualitative research question
used on my questionnaire

Qualitative research is research that, unlike quantitative research, has no set list of things that it could be. Qualitative research is usually opinions of a group of people and as these use different words and
different explanations they cannot be put into a graph and tracked. Examples of qualitative research would be something like a written review of a film, song or game or responses to advertising campaigns. I used qualitative research when collecting data for my documentary by asking my potential audience what they would like to ask an electronic musician. In doing this I got a wide range of helpful responses that allowed me to tailor some questions that were bespoke thanks to my participants. This allowed me to make the documentary more interesting as the questions being asked were questions that the audience wanted to hear.

Data Gathering Agencies
The gathering of data is not just left down to individuals who are creating a media text or others who

BARB's logo

have already researched the area. If, for example, a media company wanted to create a text that had not had any research before so there was no secondary research available they can hire an outside company to do it for them. One such example would be the Broadcasters' Audience Research Board, or BARB as they are more commonly known. They are not hired by an outside company but instead research and get a rough idea of the viewing figures for various different programs. They have a select team of people who will watch TV and be monitored and then do some calculations, thus allowing them to get the numbers of people that watched a particular show. This proves to be an invaluable tool to people whom create media texts as this lets them know all about the popularity of certain programmes. For instance if a media company wanted to create a game show they could see how popular game shows are as well as which is a popular time for shows of that genre. Internet Movie Database, or IMDB, is also applicable here as they are a free online source of information. Any new film can be added and people can add data to it and they can leave a review and rating. This can be used much like BARB in that people looking to create a media text can look for what is popular and read reviews to see what people didn't like.

Audience and Market Research
Market research is where a company will look into what is popular and check on various different factors. For example in most cases timing is important, when something is popular in the media it is best to release something relating to that so that you get viewers to the media text. Some examples of research are things like demographics and audience profiling so that they can get lots of information about the people that will be watching the piece. To gather research I sent out a questionnaire to gain some demographic information such as age and occupation as well as other information more heavily relating to the piece itself. The audience research was to profile the audience and to get a more hands-on approach where the audience themselves were more the interviewers as they listed questions they wanted answering, hopefully giving more appeal to the audience.

Production Research
I did a lot of research for the production. Initially my idea was to contact a big-time music producer and interview them through Skype as most big music producers don't live in the local area or a decent travelling distance. Eventually I decided against this idea as the quality would not be amazing and there would only be one camera angle, leading to a potentially boring documentary. I then focused on a smaller producer named MZ. I had to plan how long the whole project was going to take as they have a busy schedule. Once I had planned it out and had got location releases and talent releases everything was good to continue. All of the equipment that I used I already owned such as camera and the microphone I used was courtesy of MZ. Before going and asking the questions I got responses to the questionnaires so I could determine which questions were most popular and then ask them. I ended up asking more questions than were used and cutting them down in the edit.


[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDdxLWBiSGg