Research Techniques

How would you find out… Information about the latest film releases? What your ICT homework is, as you missed the lesson because of a dentist appointment? How to get to your new boy/ girlfriend’s house?

Why Research? Research for Creative Media Production is an essential unit of the BTEC course. As you will discover, research is an essential part of media production!

What we need to cover… How research methods and techniques are used. How to use research methods and techniques to investigate an existing media product. How to use research methods and techniques to gather material for a media production. How to present results of research.

What methods would you have used? Information about the latest film releases? What your ICT homework is, as you missed the lesson because of a dentist appointment? How to get to your new boy/ girlfriend’s house?

Types of research… Primary research Secondary research Qualitative research Quantitative research

Primary research Is original research carried out by the researcher to fit a certain purpose. What primary research methods and techniques can you think of? (interviews, questionnaires, focus groups, surveys)

What is a focus group? A form of qualitative research in which a group of people are asked to discuss their thoughts, feelings and perceptions towards a product, service or idea. Participants are free to express their opinions and the discussion is usually controlled by a moderator. Focus groups are used in marketing, social science and usability testing (to collect views on software for example).

Big Brother Channel 4 used focus every week Big Brother was shown to find out more than just how many people were watching. Why do you think they did this?

A new approach… Companies are now beginning to use social networking sites to create ongoing focus groups. H&M for example use Facebook to carry out ‘focus group’ research. Once people become friends with H&M they can discuss products, ask questions and give feedback. There are both positives and negatives to this type of focus group, can you think of any?

A new approach… Companies are now beginning to use social networking sites to create ongoing focus groups. H&M for example use Facebook to carry out ‘focus group’ research. Once people become friends with H&M they can discuss products, ask questions and give feedback. There are both positives and negatives to this type of focus group, can you think of any?

Surveys and Questionnaires 1) How many hours of TV do you watch each evening? ) Which channel do you tend to watch? BBC1 BBC2 ITV Channel 4 Freeview Channels Sky Channels

Quantitative Research Quantitative research produces data that you can measure and count, i.e. it has a quantity. It is usually shown as a set of numbers, presented as graphs and tables. It can include primary and secondary research and includes ratings, circulation, viewing figures, etc.

Qualitative Research Qualitative research produces quality information about people’s opinions, views and preferences. This can be produced by either primary or secondary research. This is very important to find out how people feel about a particular product. It is not always possible to analyse qualitative research statistically. After the film screening, each may be interviewed about the film. What were their feelings on the main character? What did they understand about the storyline? What did they think of the ending? ie: “I thought the main character was a bit of a wimp and controlled by her boyfriend at first, but I really like the change she went through and how she became more independent. The ending was very typical and expected, I would have liked to have seen more of a twist in the finale.”

Primary or Secondary? Quantitative or Qualitative? 85% of female students at Rawlins enjoyed their work experience. This compares to 40% of female students nationally as reported in TES. One Rawlins student said “It was a good experience and gave me lots of confidence”. The Sun reported an incident in a hairdressers where a lady had suffered a burnt scalp after a work experience student used bleach instead of conditioner on her hair.

Your Task… In pairs, design a questionnaire to find out about the media consumption habits of the rest of the class. You questionnaire should contain at least 5 questions and should contain an open question, a closed question, a ranked question and a rated question.

Closed questions have a defined answer, and are usually multiple choice. These type of questions are easy to analyse and represent on a graph or chart. Open questions, where you ask someone to write down a personal response to something (What? Why? When? How? Who?), often provide you with qualitative information that gives a more meaningful insight.

A rating system A ranking system

Next Steps… When you have completed your questionnaire it needs saving and uploading to the VLE You must then get 10 people to fill in your questionnaire and then collate and analyse your results (using excel for the quantitative results).