Understand The Nature And Purposes Of Research In The Creative Media Industries

Understand The Nature And Purposes Of Research In The Creative Media Industries

Research is conducted in many forms and types. From Primary Research to Secondary Research. From observations to analysis. Research is key to all aspects of a media production it is a key point for any production of any size. It is used to work out financing of the production or to assist with planning the technical requirements, There are many methods to gather information about the audience and how the consume media. Research skills are key in many sections of the media. Many looking for a job might look at a research agency or pre-production for radio, television and film. Research skills can be used in all of these sectors and is key in journalism. But research in the creative media industry in all aspects is essential.

There are different type of research. The first type is Primary Research or self generated research is where you gather data conducted by yourself such as questionnaires,surveys,interviews,observation groups, discussion groups/focus groups,audience panels or online forums. Questionnaires and surveys you gather information  by asking questions. Interviews you ask questions such as questionnaires or surveys but at face value. Discussion groups and audience panels are a good way to research due to the reliability of the face value but also first thoughts of what they think will come to there heads. Online forums are a more in depth way to gain research, people are more inclined to say a lot more on a forum to on a questionnaire or to your face. Analysis is another way to research, semi logical analysis is analysing the meaning behind something such as a poster, what feelings do you get etc.

Secondary Research is research conducted by other people you can use external sources suchh as books/magazine or IMDB or Internet Movie Database, contains lots of information about films such as production budgets,gross money made and the whole crew involved. I personally used IMDB to gather the information, you can use search engines and the world wide web to gather information on a certain topic or subject and or target audience. Need in my last unit on marketing a movie. Books and journals can be used to gather knowledge on a certain subject that your movie touches upon. The FDA guide or Film Distributors Association Guide. has many facts and tips on distributing a film that you may need. And you can use within your own film. Third party tv spots such as a certain interview that someone did you can use as research with permission of course. Going through hundreds of different archives about a certain person or time period which you will need to know for your film. Photo libraries for maybe set ideas or if you are making a documentary. Using YouTube or Vimeo for video clips,opinions or maybe to see peoples reactions. You can use viewing data websites such as Barb for data and ratings on a genre or TV show. Rajar is another website that you can use to gain information about a set audience and to see what people like to see or hear. You could use government data even, use the census to find out what 15-24 year olds like watching on TV or facts along those lines.

Quantitative research is research that can be displayed numerically,fixed facts you could say some examples of viewing figures,box office data, the percentage of something and hits on a website. These types of data can be of great use for a majority to get a rough idea of what people like but is not enough to really get into detail about what they like/dislike. Quantitive research is structured way to gather information that is statistical and reliable results. You would need to get a large volume of data to effectively  conduct quantitative research.

Qualitative research however is about the quality rather than quantities for example "why did you like?" and can open questions where you can more in depth information about a certain subject or topic. You obviously would take a smaller sample of people to ask these open ended questions but you would get a higher quality of responses a few more examples are film reviews,responses on a media text,test screenings,blogs and fan sites.

Within the creative media industry you have data gathering agencies. What do they do? Data gather agencies are agencies that sole purpose is gather information on viewing ratings, statistics on a film etc and have production companies pay them for information a few examples are Rajar, Barb, Ofcom, IMDB. So what is the purpose of research, to research into audience and market research. Getting data on the size of interest to create a audience profile for a certain media production. Within audience profiling you have demographics and psychographics.

Here are some data gathering agencies with links to there sites

Rajar,
RAJAR measures listening across all distribution platforms including online. Comparisons are from time to time attempted between RAJAR measuring people and server stats measuring computers.
This paper puts things into context and helps you understand why this comparison has many limitations.

Barb,
BARB is the official source of television viewing figures in the UK. We continually develop new ways of measuring what you and the rest of the UK are watching.

IMDB,
IMDB or the Internet movie database is a website dedicated to giving information on films facts and figures such as production budget, cast list, All sponsors and interviews and news stories. Simple to use and easy to find what you want it is the number one tool I use to gather information

Demographics,
are fixed categories such as age, genders, class and where you live. Facts about yourself you cannot change, Facts like your wealth or class. Solid figures.

psychographics are attitudes to life,what you make yourself and basically categorising yourself for examples chavs,goths and many attitudes and styles that you choose to make yourself.

Production research,

needs a few facts such as viability, is it going to make money and or succeed. Production research also entails technological resources, personnel, locations and processing research data and reliability. To increase the reliability you would ask more than one person to gain a better variety of data and more reliable. Production research is key to successfully creating a media product for the right audience and it succeeding. For example if you don't do production research into a certain genre and make a media production that goes against that genre It won't be sucessful to fans of the genre.

Assessing research data,

when finding information you must insure the information is valid depending on the task, so if you were researching into a film that is based of real life events, then making sure your facts are correct is a must. Incorrectly stating facts in a movie can be catastrophic to the media products sucess.

When trying to obtain primary research from questionnaires you must ensure that you ask the right questions to the appropriate audience to gain the right information and to ensure that you don't get silly answer responses that people. Making sure reliability is ensured and they are not answering themselves rather than what they think you want them to say.

Representative and Generalisability,

when researching data or getting data from a data gathering agency you have to make sure that the participants are a representative of a area or region and even a population. You can do this be using audience measurement panels and also making sure that you cover all ethnics backgrounds. 

Generalisability,
can the results of the research be applied more generally and more widely than the study itself or are they only relevant to the specific context of the study. So if I wanted to study a specific sector for example the demographic of teenage girls and how they like romance. Instead of studying just them, you study both male and female teenagers and see how they like romance to give you a bigger range of results.

Representative,
A representative is a typical of a class, group, or body of opinion that represents that sector. A representative of a company or organisation is responsible for the image of the company or organisation. Representatives can be solo or in a group.


References,
http://www.imdb.com/
http://www.barb.co.uk/
http://www.rajar.co.uk/
http://www.youtube.com/
http://vimeo.com/