Research is a very important part of any production, it develops your understanding of that specific topic. You should always research before starting any project to gather a better understanding of what you are planning to film. Research is important as it provides different perspectives on certain topics and allows the media producer to see if an audience would be available for the media piece. If the project you are planning on creating is based in a previous era research will allow you to gather the correct props, costume and setting to fit that era. The three main reasons to research is to understand your market, product and audience. When I created my make-up advert I had to research different make-up brands, make-up adverts, and I did questionnaires to develop my understanding of what teenage girls wanted from a makeup advert.
There are four different types of research:
Primary Research-
This is research which you have gathered first hand. This could be questionnaires which you hand out to different people, surveys, interviews or observations. An advantage of doing primary research is that you are fully aware of how accurate your data is and your data will be specific to what you want. However, some disadvantages are not having a range of people available to ask, collecting the data can also be very time consuming. The data will be up to date but if you want to know what people thought 10 years ago about a certain topic, people will have to reminisce meaning data will not be as accurate as if it was taken 10 years ago.
Secondary Research-
This is research that has already been completed for you. Secondary research is any information that is already available for your use, such as information off the internet or already filled out questionnaires. Secondary research is very efficient, since the questions are already provided in questionnaires you find, this could also result in new ideas could emerging for your own work. Disadvantages however are having un-reliable, and out of date data and you may not be able to find exactly what your looking for. In addition to this, if no internet is available finding information can be very difficult.
Quantitative Research-
This is research that contains any sort of data or numbers.. You could use graphs or statistics to classify some results from the public. Quantitative data can either be primary or secondary research, as long as closed questions are used in any questionnaires/ surveys. Quantitative research allows you to measure and analyse data easily, however you need to question a large sample of the popularity to make the data as accurate as possible.
Qualitative Research–
Qualitative research is more opinionated and in depth. You can find out qualitative research by having in-depth one-to-one interviews with one specific person. It’s extremely useful during the early stages of production, to develop the media producers ideas (What aspects to focus on in their production), however this research can be very time consuming and the researcher interprets all of the research from one source resulting in biased research overall.
For creating questionnaires and interviews you can ask either open or closed questions. Closed question receive a one word answer typically being yes or no. Open questions have a more detailed response, expressing the interviewees opinion and feelings. Closed questions are typically used as primary quantitative research carried out through questionnaires. Since the answers are just yes or no answers it’s easy to put the results into a chart to summarise your results. Open questions are primary qualitative research carried out through one to one interviews. They are more in-depth and opinionated.
Focus groups are a qualitative method of research, where a small group of carefully recruited people gather to discuss all aspects of your idea. Each person has to be specially recruited to ensure that they are part of the relevant target audience. When holding a focus group you ask the group different questions to see their opinion of your idea, this leads to an in-depth discussion about the pro’s and cons of your idea, and results in an idea which the desired audience would enjoy.
To avoid copyright claims you should always create a bibliography to reference your work and where you got your secondary research from. A bibliography is just a list of sources where you got your information from, it’s always at the end of your essay on the final page.
There are different ways to reference different things:
Books – Author (last name first), Book title, City: Publisher, date of publication.
Magazine – Author (last name first), Article title, Name of magazine, Volume number, (Date): page numbers.
Website such as Wiki answers – Author of message, (Date), Subject of message, Bulletin board, Available email
Internet – URL, author, date.
Bibliography:
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/owlprint/559/
http://www.ehow.co.uk/info_8091178_advantages-disadvantages-qualitative-quantitative-research.html
http://www.marketingresearch.org/focus-groups
http://www.reading.ac.uk/internal/studyadvice/Studyresources/Reading/sta-references.aspx
http://changingminds.org/techniques/questioning/open_closed_questions.htm
Kerry Hatfield 