Hello Fellow blog readers.
Within this blog I will be
discussing the advantages and the disadvantages of a range of research
techniques. I will be writing about the different types of research qualitative
research and quantitative research. Furthermore I will investigate the methods
and sources of research, which are primary research, and secondary research.
The purpose and nature of research that I am going to look into are audience
research, marketing research and production research.
The different types of
research are qualitative research and quantitative research. Qualitative
research is a text based source of information that is used to explore,
describe, and explain and to predict. McQueen and Knussen (2002). “Qualitative
research approaches explore and describe, explain and predict”. P28. Examples
for this type of research would be books, journals and reviews. The advantages
for using this type of research technique are that the source of information
that is used is more reliable as the content that has been collected is from a
book. This could mean that the writer of this book would be a professional in
the media industry and has found this information him/herself as they might
have degree in this field of media. The disadvantage for using qualitative
research would be if you were using journals in your research. The content that
was written in the journals would be non-reliable as this source of information
is not professional and has been found by someone else who might have not
researched the topic correctly or has made a few mistakes in their work.
Quantitative research is a
numerical based source of information, which is used to measure, to find
statistics, collects data from a group of people. This is done by using
survey’s to ask a broad range of questions to a specific audience. When data is
collected and measured, the statistics would be formed into pie charts, bar
charts, and tables or into columns. This source of information is an advantage
because if you were finding out what programme is the most popular programme on
BBC One, you would research the viewing figures on the BARB website to find out
that during the week in early September 2013 New tricks with 7.83 million
viewers was the most popular show at that time. The disadvantage of using
Quantitative research would be that the source of information that you have
collected might be false data, as the answers that you were given might not
make sense or are not true. The data could also be incorrect if you have
misused the statistics when creating a table of the results that was collected.
The different methods and
sources of information, which is used within qualitative and quantitative
research, are primary research and secondary research. The difference between
primary and secondary research is that Primary research is research that you
have produced yourself. Examples for this would be interviews, questionnaires
and notebooks. May.T (2002). “The interviewer is freer to probe beyond
the in a manner which would be appear prejudicial to the aims of
standardization and comparability. Information about age, sex, occupation, type
of household and so on, can be asked in a standardized format.”P123. An
advantage for using interviews, as your primary research is that you are able
to use structured, semi structured and grouped interviews. A semi structured
interview is beneficial as a research source because you are able to allow the
interviewee to talk about the topic in depth, this way you are able to collect
more information and will begin to have more of an understanding on the matter
or an argument. A disadvantage of using primary research would be that if you
are using your notes from the past, you might not be able to understand the
writing that could cause false information when you are interviewing someone
which could cause confusion and misunderstanding.
Secondary research is a
research source that is produced from a source of information that already
exists, such as gathering information from the Internet, books for example
novels and magazines. The advantages for using secondary research would be that
it is very easy to get hold of this information if you have access to the
Internet or a library. It is also a low cost form of research as you are able
to gather this information from any library, which makes it much easier for the
researchers to form a large and broad amount of data. The disadvantages for
using secondary research would be that this form of research could be biased
and would become unreliable as the information might have only one side of this
topic and might not support every end.
The purpose and nature that
are found within these methods and sources are audience research, marketing
research and production research. Audience research in the media industry is
divided into categories, which is known as the Anthony Giddens theory. These
different categories are known as social capital, cultural capital, financial
capital and education capital. This is to find out how much equity a person
might have. Anthony Giddens (2009). “Sociology is the scientific
study of human life, social groups, whole societies and the human world as
seen. P6. Social class is split into class A- upper middle class, B- middle
class, C1- lower middle class, C2- skilled working class, D- working class and
E- non working. Audience research is used to find out what people are mostly
interested into so that the audience of your product is satisfied so that your
figures for example for a radio station would rise instead of decreasing.
Market research is used to
find out what people want to see/ listen to. This is to find out their
interests and to see what they do not approve with. Market research links in
with audience research as market researchers will have to divide each category
by age, sex, social interest and social class. An example of market research
would be RAJAR, as market researcher for radio stations would be able to use
RAJAR surveys to find out what the most popular radio show is at the time, and
to see what age group this particular radio show reaches out to so they can
find out what kind of music that their audience is into to see what they are
interested in, or if they shou ld be showing hard news or soft news for this
type of audience. This is so that their product is able to achieve higher
rating figures than their competition.
When using production
research you will be looking into the financial, copyright, locations, time
line and the facility issues. These issues are a large part in researching as
if these are not look into when creating a product such as the Geordie Shore television
programme. If you use a song within your product you will need to make sure
that it is referenced as you could be done for copyright and forgery. The
most important research when creating a product is to make sure you have enough
money for the funding of your facilities or even your location as you might
have a certain location that has a required length of time for example £1000 an
hour. If all your actors are not available for this required length this could
cause your product to break through which could cause you and your sponsors to
become in a large amount of debt and could become a waste of time.
Bibliography
Anthony Giddens
sociology, Polity Press. Cambridge.
Social
Research. Open University Press. Buckingham.
Research
Methods for Social Science, an introduction. Prentice Hall. London.
Thank you for reading my blog,
Be back soon.
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