Research data

Exam question: Identify four methods for collecting audience feedback used by media producers for specific media products you have studied (4)

Dr. Who:

1. Questionnaire 
2. Poll
3. Survey
4. Viewing figures 

Primary research- research conducted by the media company directly from the target audience, to gather opinions, views, etc.

• a questionnaire (have open questions to provide more understanding, can produce and fill out online saving time and money, but take longer to complete which puts people off completing it)
• focus group- host a small group of your target audience to ask them their thoughts and opinions on a media product. (can show the group pre-production materials, there might be untruthful data).
• interviews
• survey (closed questions- immediate data, but cannot expand on your answers, unreliable data due to falsely filled questions)
• observations

Secondary research- data collected second hand therefore it already exists 

Not always truthful and reliable, also can be used by competitors

• books, newspapers, magazines (looking at the author gives the information more credibility)
• websites (anyone can change the information)
• other businesses publishing primary research
• articles
• tv programs
• official data and stats
• existing data (outdated existing data)

Qualitative data: Typically descriptive, in-depth data is used to find out how people think about a given product.

Questions that allow people to write extended responses. This type of data can be used to identify like and dislikes, trends, etc. OPEN-ENDED.

Quantitative data: Data that can be measured numerically (e.g. the number of people who watch a given television show).

Closed questions, typically turned into a graph to help analyse the data.