Understand the nature and purposes of research in the creative media industries.

Types of research

There are two main types of research: One of these is Primary research, This is research conducted by you. An example of this is: questionnaires, interviews and observations. an example that we used was the surveys that we conducted.

Another type of research is Secondary research, this is research conducted by other people which you use. This includes: Internet, books and archives. an example of this that we used was the Film Distributors Associations Guide.

Methods of research

There are also two different methods of research these are Quantitative and Qualitative.
Quantitative is data which can be expressed numerically as percentages etc. for example viewing figures and box office data. an example of this that we used was the closed questions on our questionnaires like "Would you see the film...?"

Qualitative are things that can not be expressed numerically but require more that just a yes or no answer and example of this would be interviews and open questions which we also used in our questionnaires.

Data Agencies

There are agencies which specialize in data gathering for example BARB RAJAR and IMDB.
these agencies gather data for people to use as secondary research. IMDB and Box Office Mojo are examples of a data agencies that we used for our research.

Purpose of research

Audience and Market research

Audience and Market are essential parts of research in the media industry, research into the audience and the market allows the company to get information about the competition and build an audience profile the audience profile is helpful as it provides informations on the audience, like; Demographics, geodemographics, consumer behaviour and consumer attitudes. this shows when an advert or show should be aired. Researching into the market allows the researcher to know if there is any competition for the media product like another product being released on the same day.

For my example the expendables was release on the same day as Scott Pilgrim Vs The World, The Ependables was a more well known film with a with a more famous cast list including Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham and Jet Li. So i believe this film should have been released on a different date as more people would have seen the explendables rather than scott pilgrim.

Production research

Research also needs to be carried out on a production scale this helps plan out the product. Production research includes Finace, resources, personnel and locations, it is important to research this things as without a plan of what is needed it is hard to hit deadlines which is important in the media industry. Another thing to consider is Viability which is wether or not the product will succeed this helps with the funding of productions.

In our first assignment the depict we had to plan and conduct production research by thinking of personnel and locations with our project we did not need any props so finance was not an issue.

Assessing Research Data

Reliability

In a media production reliablility is important, for example in a questionnaire is not reliable the results of it would be useless and unusable. To avoid reliability issues it is neccesary to ask more people, but there is also the issue of the questionnaire not being answered truthfully as some people say what they think you want to hear.

In my project i think some people did not take the questionnaire seriously but i asked enough people to take out some of the results and still have reliable results.

Validity

In a media production validity is important if a questionnaire is not valid then the results of it would be useless, to avoid validity issues you must ask appropriate audience and take into consideration that people rush or cheat when filling in surveys.