DEFINING MEDIA AUDIENCES By Eleanor-Rose Woods

PRIMARY RESEARCH Forms of primary research

SURVEYS  One method of conducting primary research is to have people fill out surveys. Whether you stand there with a clipboard or you have people mail in their surveys doesn't matter. It's the fact that the answers are given directly by a population that makes a survey primary research.

INTERVIEWS  An interview is another form of primary research. If you were conducting research on local police problems, sitting down with the chief of police and asking him questions would be one way to gather primary research. However, if your interviewee doesn't have facts or figures to back up his words, you may need to look for figures to see if what the interviewee said checks out.

OBSERVATION  A primary researcher should never underestimate the value of his own two eyes. For instance, if you're trying to determine the popularity of a certain color of car among company employees, a perfectly legitimate method of primary research would be to walk the parking lot and to observe what color cars are present.

PROS & CONS. The research is current to the exact time/place. Its accurate to what you what you want to know. Its tailored to your exact needs. Interviewees may not be reliable. Each method will have to be done many times to get it to be accurate

SECONDARY RESEARCH Forms of secondary research

PROS & CONS Easier to gather information Its cheaper Can be unreliable and invalid

QUALITATIVE DATA.To gain an understanding of underlying reasons and motivations.To provide insights into the setting of a problem, generating ideas and/or hypotheses for later quantitative research.To uncover prevalent trends in thought and opinion

PROS & CONS Gives us more in depth feedback Open to interpretation More time consuming Cant put into a graph, many varied answer

QUANTITATIVE DATA  To quantify data and generalize results from a sample to the population of interest  To measure the incidence of various views and opinions in a chosen sample  Sometimes followed by qualitative research which is used to explore some findings further

PROS & CONS Easy to understand Quick to do Not in depth Closed answers don’t give a definite answer