Type of Research - Qualitative and Quantitative

This task requires me to explore the purpose of research within the media industry and why media companies carry out research on media productions or products. The two obvious reasons would be to understand the personal benefit and the other the wider benefit - that is the audiences viewing/listening or reading into the particular media platform. 

The most successful media companies would know how to attract their target audience by carrying out research, but first they need to find out information on who that target audience actually is, therefore research there also needs to be done. This gives them the ability to communicate to these target audience members effectively, which is the key of all media institutes. Audience research can be the amount of people who like that media product or what they like about it. 

This is split into two different types of research methods, qualitative and quantitative.
''Qualitative research is primarily exploratory research. It is used to gain an understanding of underlying reasons, opinions, and motivations. It provides insights into the problem or helps to develop ideas or hypotheses for potential quantitative research''. 
The main or primary aim of qualitative research is that to understand the opinions on media products of the public or target audience through many techniques. It also aims to make sense or interpret the way the subject within the media product or the production itself impacts people. 

Another type of research is quantitative research. “Quantitative research refers to the systematic empirical investigation of social phenomena via statistical, mathematical or computational techniques”-(Wikipedia) The objective of quantitative research is to develop and employ measurable facts and information rather than opinions because it is based on actual data. It can help to determine how many people are likely to buy a new product idea, which group of individuals will react best to which creative approach, which incentive or proposition will appeal to which target market.

An advantage of Quantitative research is that it allows the researcher to measure and analyze data. The relationship between an independent and dependent variable is studied in detail. This is advantageous because the researcher is more objective about the findings of the research. The main disadvantage of quantitative research is that the context of the study is ignored. Quantitative research does not study things in a natural setting or discuss the meaning things have for different people as qualitative research does. Another disadvantage is that a large sample of media consumers must be studied; the larger the sample of people researched, the more statistically accurate the results will be. An example of this is when BARB (Broadcaster’s Audience Research Board), an organisation which carries out audience research, is trying to find out the number of viewers that watched a particular show on BBC 1 they might get a percentage but it might not be accurate because on their website in shows that they got their numbers from 5100 homes and that’s not all the homes in the UK so that can be a problem. In contrast to BARB which focuses on television audience research, RAJAR (Radio Joint Audience Research) is the organisation which carries out audience research for radio stations. It is important to carries audience research on radio audience because radio stations need to know how many people listen to them so that they can improve their product in order to keep or share audiences.

Methods of Research

Primary research

One of the methods of research is primary research. This is the type of research that is conducted independently; it is original research. Prime examples of primary research are carrying out questionnaires, surveys, internet forums, and interviews or group research. An advantage of primary research is being able to explore the secondary research already performed by other researchers. Carrying out their own research allows the media organization to address issues specific to their own situation like if they want to launch a family sitcom, they can screen the pilot episode in advance to a small number of people to see what they think about it, this will allow the media organization to analyse and improve their products according to what the audience like and don’t like.

Some advantages of primary research are “greater control – not only does primary research enable the marketer to focus on specific issues, it also enables the marketer to have a higher level of control over how the information is collected”.-(knowthis.com) – this means a media company can focus on their product only so they can analyse it better and do research based on only their product.

Some of the disadvantages of primary research are the costs and the time scale. In regards to the cost primary research may be very expensive since there is a great deal of media involvement and the expense in preparing and carrying out research can be high. This is expensive because all of the data has to be independently collected without any help from previously existing data so it take a lot of money to do that. 

Furthermore it is time consuming “to be done correctly primary data collection requires the development and execution of a research plan.” (knowthis.com) – it is time consuming because primary researchers have to start with no existing data so all the research has to be done from start to finish by the researcher.

Secondary research

Secondary research uses outside information assembled by media sources, it is a form of research where the information already exists and can be used as a form of second hand research. It is usually published in pamphlets, newsletters, trade publications, magazines, and newspapers. Media firms can also get information from the government, competitors or trade publications. 

There are advantages and disadvantages to secondary research. Some of the advantages of secondary research are that it is easy to do because of the already existing data. Most of the pre –existing sources are accurate therefore making your research easier. However there are also some disadvantages of this type of research. One disadvantage is it is frequently biased and inaccuracies cannot be checked. It also has a lack of independence of perspective to research.