Summary of Research

This is primary research for NRS because they are the ones who carried it out, however this is secondary research to us because we have not conducted it ourselves. This is also audience research because they have talked about standard occupational classification where they have separated the classes, they also have ages and gender so they know the numbers for each category.This is market research too because it shows the statistics from the competitors. Finally this is quantitative research because there are numbers and results, rather than the opinions of people.

For an example - 'How I Met Your Mother'

This is a television programme, it is can be a primary research because they need to find out what to wear in that year. Like when this first come out, it was in 2005, and they need to make sure they are dressing up like the style was in 2005 and keep going every year. Also no-one haven't got a programme called 'How I Met Your Mother' and they have to do their own script, characters, stages. This could be secondary research because they can see other programmes and how they do in TV programmes and try to similar. Also they will need to know what to do in their first programme so they can look another programmes and see how can they do it. Also it can give them some ideas for this programme. This can be audience research because they can see who watches this like ages, gender. This can help them because they know who watches this ages and gender. They can make this episode to make the audience like this and make sure people still watches this. This is market research as well because they want this programme best comedy TV and there is a lots of comedy TV. They want everyone watches this more than other programmes. This can be quantitative research because they can see whats their rating and how many people watches this every episode, there is an example of their ratings below. This can be qualitative research because they would want what do they think of this and their opinions so they can make changes and make it better and keep going on with no changes. it is important to have opinions for TV programmes because if one of the programmes are not good and not many people watches it so they can ask them what do they think of it and what could they change it to make it better before it cancelled. This can be production research because

Production Research

Conducting research to be able to complete production? Locations, equipments hire, cast and crew costs, H+S
Production Research is the collection and analysis of information for the content and production of a media product. Production research basically involves finding information that can be used to explore the many if not all the facets of a play: its context in our world, author, and the world of the play, critical analysis and interpretation, production history, images and sounds, and sources, influences, and analogues.

If the audience research goes well and the market analysis is favourable a media company might decide to launch a new product into the market.
Production research is needed to provide content and gather material to allow the company to develop the new product. Also research the commercial viability of actually making the product and to investigate the technology and personnel available. They need to check out suitable recording and production locations. Finally, thoroughly research and plan production and post-production stages to ensure that it all runs as smoothly as possible.

Audience Research

Doing complete research into your audience - age. ethnicity, gender, geodemographics, psychographics, standard occupational classification.
Audience research is the collection and analysis of information about the target audience for a particular media product or sector of the media industry. Audience measurement measures how many people are in an audience, usually in relation to radio listenership and television viewership, but also in relation to newspaper and magazine readership and, increasingly, web traffic on websites.

Effective and successful media products target the right audience and communicate to them in an effective way. As the media industry becomes more fragmented, competition for a share of the audience becomes even more intense. Knowing who your target audience is, and what makes them tick, is therefore increasingly important.
Audience research is about investigating the statistical data about the size and profile of the audience for a particular media product. The extent to which potential audience members are aware of a particular media product or service. And finally, what members of the target audience think about particular products and services and their patterns of behaviour and potential use of the products.
When they research the audience, they research their age, ethnicity, gender, geodemographics, psychographics and standard occupational.

An example of audience research, this information tells me what gender and age and what type of movies or TV do they watch.
There are many different methods about the audience research and the different methods are interviews, questionnaires, surveys and discussion groups etc. All of them have advantages and disadvantages, advantages of interviews are that the interviewee is on their own so they can tell the truth. Also you can get to properly know or understand the participating audience.
Disadvantages of interviews are that interviewer can steer conversation to own advantage. Also it is time consuming to interview enough people and lastly it could make the interviewee feel uncomfortable.

Advantages of Questionnaires are that it can be distributed on a wide scale. It is easy to evaluate data and can contain both open and closed questions.

 Disadvantages of questionnaires are that it is tempting to skip questions or fake answers. Distribution method may collect more of one type of audience than another.

Advantages of Surveys are that you can get views from a diverse audience and it is high reliability.

 Disadvantage of surveys is that not all of the audience sample may reply.

Advantage of Discussion groups is that it can thoroughly cover subjects as the discussion gets different points of view.

Disadvantages of discussion groups are that dominant characters influence other participants so they do not voice their own opinions. Not everyone gets an opportunity to voice opinions.

Market Research

Researching the market you are trying to enter? gap in the market'
Market Research is the collection and analysis of information about the market within which a particular product will compete with other products for an audience and for revenue. The systematic process of data gathering and analysis to gain more information about customers and market competition. The information is then used to plan campaign strategies, improve current products or diversify products within the brand.
The media marketplace is most competitive. Media producers often undertake detailed market research into their target market or commission other companies to undertake research on their behalf. They are interested in what the market looks like, who the other competitors in that market are and what their products are like. They are particularly interested in the economic factors within the market and what potential revenue is available.

Qualitative Research

Qualitative Research is based on opinions, attitudes and preferences rather than hard facts and figures. Qualitative research produces information on people's opinions, views and preferences about something. Qualitative data is important to the media industry as it is used to find out what individuals and groups think and feel about a particular media product such as a new computer game, television programme or film. It is also used by advertisers to obtain people's responses to an advertising campaign.

Advantages of Qualitative Research. The first advantage is to provide depth and detail and looks deeper than analysing ranks and counts by recording attitudes, feelings and behaviours. Second advantage is to create openness by encouraging people to expand on their responses can open up new topic areas not initially considered. Another advantage is to simulates people's individual experiences and a detailed picture can be built up about why people act in certain ways and their feelings about these actions. Finally, the advantage is to attempts to avoid pre-judgements, if used alongside quantitative data collection, it can explain why a particular response was given.

Disadvantages of Qualitative Research. First disadvantage is usually fewer people studied, collection of qualitative data is generally more time consuming that quantitative data collection and therefore unless time, staff and budget allows it is generally necessary to include a smaller sample size. Second disadvantage is less easy to generalise because fewer people are generally studied it is not possible to generalise results to that of the population. Usually exact numbers are reported rather than percentages. Another disadvantage is that it is difficult to make systematic comparisons. For example, if people give widely differing responses that are highly subjective. Lastly, the disadvantage is dependent on skills of the researcher, particularly in the case of conducting interviews, focus groups and observation.

An example of qualitative research
Another example

The qualitative research is important to the media because they can hear their opinions and they can do something about it or not if they need to improve. For an example, the focus group can come and watch a film before it is released and they can give their opinions to them.

Quantitative Research

Quantitative Research is based on measurable facts and information that can be counted, producing numerical and statistical data. Quantitative research is type of research which uses numbers for data and statistics to analyse results.
Quantitative research produces data and information that is measurable and quantifiable and includes programme ratings, box office takings, readership circulation figures and website hits, as well as the counting and measuring of items or space in a content analysis of a media product. The data generated from quantitative research can usually be represented numerically and is often presented in the form of tables, charts and diagrams.

Advantages of quantitative research. First advantage is that quantitative research allows the researcher to measure and analyse 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. Second advantage is that quantitative research can be used to test hypotheses in experiments because of its ability to measure data using statistics.

Disadvantages of quantitative research. The first disadvantage is the context of the study or experiment 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 the population must be studied; the larger the sample of people researched, the more statistically accurate the results will be.
This is an example of top 30 films box-office figures for 2011.

This is an example of Weekly Top 30 Programmes for 3rd-9th September 2012.

Quantitative research is important in the media because you can collect as much as you want to find.Also you can analyse it and compare the results.It is important for the media because for an example if this is about television programme. They can see their ratings and if it is low rating, they always can improve it before it goes bad.

Secondary Research

Secondary research is research using existing information that has already been gathered by other people or organisations. Secondary research involves the use of data and information that has already been published or is already available within an organisation. The examples of secondary research are books, journals, archives, photo libraries, and searching on the Internet for information that already exists.

BARB is a website that tells how many people watch certain programmes. The BARB website carries viewing data within the Viewing Figures section; TV Facts provides you with various facts such as Multi-Channel Development since 1992; BARB since 1981 lists the 10 most watched programmes for each year and 30 most watched programmes for each year. This is an example of options you can choose to find out more.

  This is an example Top 30 programmes.

RAJAR stands for Radio Joint Audience Research and is the official body in charge of measuring radio audiences in the UK. It is jointly owned by the BBC and the Radio Centre on behalf of the commercial sector. This is an example of what the website looks like.

This is an example of listening figures in UK.

NRS stands for National Readership Survey and provides the most authoritative and valued audience research in use for print advertising trading in the UK. The survey covers over 250 of Britain's major newspapers and magazines, showing the size and nature of the audiences they achieve.

Advantages of secondary research. First advantage is inexpensive, Secondary research can be virtually free for a wide variety of topics through the use of the Internet or going through public records or libraries. Data is available freely or at far lesser cost through secondary sources.

Second advantage is easy to access, the Internet has made huge amounts of information on a wide variety of topics readily available at your fingertips. Internet search can pinpoint the information you are looking for.

Disadvantages of secondary research. First disadvantage is secondary data may have been collected some time ago and, therefore, be out-of-date.  Because it has been collected for another purpose, it may be in the wrong format or incomplete.

Second disadvantage is that secondary analysis can be used in irresponsible ways. If variables aren't exactly those you want, data can be manipulated and transformed in a way that might lessen the validity of the original research.