Summary

The above image is taken from http://www.nrs.co.uk/toplinereadership.html which provides statistics for how many people read a certain thing. In this case, the image refers to the daily newspapers.
This information is Quantitative as it is all numerical. This means that the results can be presented clearly and easily compared.
This kind of research is usually best for finding out who, what, where and when which is what the image above is doing.

Quantitative data also involves both primary and secondary research.

The study on newspapers above is Primary research for the company who conducted it (NRS), and then secondary research for anyone else who then views it to gain information.

The statistics above also help with Audience Research as this research provides information on the people buying the newspapers - for instance, whatever their occupation and income is will determine the type of newspaper they buy. Eg, people with a higher income will buy a newspaper such as The Financial Times, or The Guardian whereas those with a lower income will opt for a newspaper like The Sun or The Daily Mail.

Production Research

Production Research is focused on sourcing and generating material for the content of a media product as well as making sure that the resources are in place and the funding is secure to make the product viable.
This includes researching sources of equipment and facilities, a crew trained for your needs as well as what you actually need for your product. When all this is found, you must then make sure that it is all ready and in good working order for when and where you need it.

For example if you were to make a music video, you would have to have the correct crew and equipment to produce it. If this was all not in the correct place at the same time it would be hard to get your music video properly filmed.
It saves time and money when everything is organised properly which is essential in the media business.

Market Research

The media market is highly competitive and market research is an important part of any business strategy. Market research is a key factor to get an advantage over other businesses promoting a similar product. Market research provides important information to identify the:

- Market Need,

- Market Size,

- Competition.

When promoting something new, you have to know as much as you can about your target audience for it to be a success.

For example, if you are promoting a sports magazine, you would obviously target people who are interested in sports.



The image above is an example of researching the products that already exist. In this case, the NRS is looking at how popular newspapers are with their readers...

This kind of information is useful because if you are wishing to bring out a new product, it is best to look at similar items to see how popular they are.

As you can see from the information above, there isn't really much room for another tabloid newspaper. The ones that are out now are already popular enough for people to want to change what they read.

Audience Research

Audience Research tells you what you need to know about your selected target audience; media companies put a lot of time and effort into finding out what they need to know about these people.

Demographics are the way in which a media company classifies their audience according to a range of different attributes such as age, gender, social class, ethnicity, sexual orientation and occupation.

Most companies involved with media research or production use a scale which puts people into different categories according to their occupation, and the income that it brings in. This scale is based on broad assumptions.

There are 6 different social grades which are as follows:

A = Upper Middle Class - Higher managerial, administrative or professional (Royals)
B = Middle Class - Intermediate managerial, administrative or professional (lawyers/doctors)
C1 = Lower Middle Class - Supervisory or clerical junior administrative or professional (university)
C2 = Skilled Working Class - Skilled manual workers (electricians, plumbers etc)
D = Working Class - Semi-skilled and unskilled manual workers (retail)
E = Those at the Lowest Levels of Subsidence - State Pensioners, casual or lowest grade workers.

Media companies also take into account where people live when producing a product. This is known as Geodemographics. Knowing the profile of the local population and understanding the issues that affect that community can help a company target a certain target audience.

Another thing that a company may take into account are Psychographics which are important for research as it gives you clues on a person’s lifestyle, for example what interests they have, and what media products they like. For instance, people who have a very active lifestyle would be interested in a product which reflects this; such as health related magazines or sport related websites.

Quantitative Research

Quantitative Research involves collecting facts and information that can be counted, providing numerical and statistical data.

 http://www.barb.co.uk/
The link above is taken from Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board's website. Barb is one of the leading agencies from whom media agencies can obtain this sort of information.

Qualitative data involves both primary and secondary research and can be shown in tables, charts and diagrams. It is usually best for finding out who, what, where and when.

Advantages of Quantitative Research is that,
- It allows for a broader study as facts and figures are much easier to collect than peoples personal thoughts and opinions.
- Person Bias can be avoided because there is no need for people to explain their feelings.

Disadvantages of this are,
- They collect much less information on what people actually think/believe.
- They have a much narrower dateset.

Qualtitative Research

Qualitative Research provides information on opinions, views and thoughts on something - rather than facts and figures. Looking at how media producers carry out this research is important.

For example, focus groups. Focus groups are very popular as they allow the producer to gain direct feedback from a small group of individuals.
Also, questionnaires also allow for specific targeting of certain sectors of the audience and means that very precise and targeted questions can be asked.
Face to Face interviews can be time consuming, but are beneficial as they allow the interviewer to get a reaction off of the interviewee.

There are of course advantages and disadvantages of this kind of research:

 Advantages of Qualitative research are,
- It provides depth and detail on attitudes, feelings and behaviours.
- It creates openness which encourages people to expand on their responses
- A detailed picture can be built up about why people act in certain ways and their feelings about these actions

A few disadvantages are that,
- It can take a lot of time to gather all of the information together, and then read through all of the results to find something useful to your study.
- It takes a lot of time to generalise
- Also, fewer people are often studied in this kind of research.

Secondary Research

Secondary Research is the use of information and data that already exists.
There are many ways of collecting secondary research, some examples of this are:
Reading books and magazines, searching the Internet and also taking notes from existing research studies.
Companies such as The National Readership Survey conduct primary research and then sell on the findings to other media companies who then use it as secondary research.

http://www.barb.co.uk/
The above link is from the 'Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board' website which is responsible for providing the official measurement of UK television audiences.

As with any kind of research, there are Advantages and Disadvantages.
- An example of an Advantage, is that as the research has already been conducted by another organisation/person, so it is less time consuming.
- Also, it is easy to access - in today's age, more or less everybody has access to some form of research, whether that be off of the Internet, or from books and magazines.
- As the research has already be conducted, it is usually cheap/free for you to look at this research yourself.

- An example of a disadvantage of using secondary research is that it is not always relevant to your needs. For instance, you could be looking at research that was conducted with an age group of 15-20 year olds, where as you're looking for information on people ages 16 and under.
- Secondly it could be out of date which would be of no use to a fast changing market.

Primary Research

Primary Research is original research that you gather yourself. This enables us to gain data on what we are researching.
A few of the different ways that primary research can be conducted are, through:
Interviews - these can take place either on the phone or face to face.
Questionnaires - Surveys can be done on the Internet or by hand and posted back to the relevant place.
Focus Groups - a focus group is where a company shows a preview of a product to a group of people, and then asks them what they think of it).

Advantages -
Primary Research allows us to collect specific research issues and allows the researcher to control the search design.
Primary research also allows the researcher to have a great amount of control over certain things such as the project size and goal.

Disadvantages -
Primary Research can be very expensive. (for example the cost of the paper on which it is carried out)
Late responses may be gathered, and are to be expected.
And lastly, by the time the research is gathered it may be too late and out of date.

Examples:
 Radio Questionnaire 
The above link is an example of Primary Research that I have conducted. It is a survey I made in order to discover what people would like on/thought of a college radio station.
This allowed me to collect peoples opinions in a personal way, without them having to disclose any private details about themselves.