Unit 1: P1, M1, D1Why would you complete research if you were creating a new media product?

• To find out if your target audience would buy your product• To find out how much you could sell your product for• To find out how to make your product more appealing to your target audience• To find out how to market your product to your target audience

Method Definition Advantage Disadvantage

Primary

Experiments, investigations, or tests carried out to acquire data first-hand, rather than being gathered from published sources.

• You can research exactly what you want, how you want, and don't have to rely on other peoples work.

• You can interpret the results how you want, and don’t need to rely on other peoples interpretations.

• The research will be accurate for the current time / place / situation you are studying

• It can take a lot of time and cost a lot of money to conduct primary research

• You might not always have the necessary things to conduct it, e.g. samples etc.

Secondary

Secondary research (also known as desk research) involves the summary, collation and/or synthesis of existing research rather than primary research, where data is collected from, for example, research subjects or experiments.

• It already exists, so it saves time.

• It is often cheaper than doing primary research.

• It may allow you access to data you could not otherwise get.

• In some cases, it is very expensive (scanner data, e.g.)

• You may have less control over how the data was collected.

• There may be biases in the data that you don't know about.

• Its answers may not exactly fit your research questions.

• It may be obsolete data.

Unit 1: P1, M1, D1

Quantitative

The use of sampling techniques (such as consumer surveys) whose findings may be expressed numerically, and are amenable to mathematical manipulation enabling the researcher to estimate future events or quantities.

• Testing and validating already constructed theories about how and why phenomena occur

• Testing hypotheses that are constructed before the data are collected

• Can generalize research findings when the data are based on random samples of sufficient size

• The researcher’s categories that are used might not reflect local constituencies’ understandings

• The researcher’s theories that are used might not reflect local constituencies’ Understandings

• The researcher might miss out on phenomena occurring because of the focus on theory or hypothesis testing rather than on theory or hypothesis generation

Qualitative

Qualitative research is a method of inquiry employed in many different academic disciplines, traditionally in the social sciences, but also in market research and further contexts.

• Its strength is in uncovering more about people’s experience (why things may be the way they are).

• As qualitative research focuses on small groups, it can be less expensive than quantitative research which may require large groups of participants or expensive measurement tools.

• Qualitative research methods collect data about what your select group of participants feel or think, or how they behave. You can't necessarily use this data to make assumptions beyond this specific group of participants.

Unit 1: P1, M1, D1

What research methods did you use when completing the assignments in year 11 (Unit 18 Advertising and Unit 21 Media Project? (e.g. primary, secondary, qualitative, quantitative)

When completing the assignments Unit 18 and 21, I used different types of research methods. In unit 18, I used a lot of secondary research looking at other products and how they’ve advertised it to give me ideas on how to do my advert. I also did this for unit 21, looking at other dance videos to inspire me. To help me find out what my audience like when they watch a video, I did qualitative research and made a survey with various questions about aspects of a video.

What research techniques did you use when completing the assignments in year 11 (Unit 18 Advertising and Unit 21 Media Project? (e.g. using the library, the internet, watching videos, reading info, recces, practises, plans etc)

In unit 18, I looked at other products and how they’ve advertised it to give me ideas on how to do my advert. I also did this for unit 21, looking at other dance videos to inspire me.

How did you collate, store and use the information trail for Units 18 and 21? (e.g. did you book mark key websites? Keep a list of websites used? Print off or save any info for your folders?)

For Unit 18, I book marked the majority of the websites I looked at to help me look at them again in the next lesson. For Unit 21, I did not do this because all I did was look at videos on YouTube and I could remember the name of the videos easily.

Unit 1: P1, M1, D1

How and why might you use the four research methods in a real life situation? For example if you worked for the BBC and were tasked with creating a new reality TV show how might you use the four research methods to help?

Firstly, it would completely depend on what type of TV show you were creating. If you were creating something that is uncertain and people may not like then it would be best to do primary research because you can personally see people’s reactions to it and talk to them about it. Alternatively, if you were creating something that you think will fit in with the crowd then it would be best to use secondary research because it is much quicker and you will be able to release your show quicker, however it is quite expensive so you will have to be confident that your TV show will be successful. I think that quantitative data and qualitative data is better for bigger TV shows because they are used for large scale surveys and are quite expensive.