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

Types/Methods of research

Primary research

Data provided by research projects and experiments conducted by the researchers (The person  / people who is organizing the primary research. can be the guy who is handing out the surveys to be filled)  of a project, such as surveys or observational studies, often provide the basis for primary data. This data is obtained and collaborated into a whole to form the 'Primary Reasearch' of any individual research project. (Can even be previous surveys done on the same thing not to long ago by yourself.) It can be done through multiple methods, including, but not limited to, questionnaires and telephone surveys in market research, or experiments and direct observations in the physical sciences (Such as those "Rating boxes" That some people have in households), amongst others.

The term primary research is widely used in academic research (Universities), market research (Business, Often when making trailers and the like) and competitive intelligence (Creating products).

An example of primary research in opinion research: the government wants to know if people are pleased with how the government is being run, so they hand out questionnaires to the public asking if they are happy and, if not, how to improve. Another example is what i had to do in this segment, asking people about what they thought of Poster A and how it could be improved, and the same with poster B.

An example of primary research in the physical sciences: Can the transition temperature of high-temperature superconductors be increased by varying the composition of the superconducting material. The scientist will modify the composition of the high-Tc material in various ways and measure the transition temperature of the new material as a function of its composition.

Translation on the last paragraph for those not into engineering or the sciences, Can two highly reactive materials handle the heat when transferring the heat From Material A to Material B, and how effective it is by changing a part of the Materials each time.

All research, whether primary or secondary, depends eventually on the collection of primary research data.

Methods of primary research

-          Observation

-          Experimentation

-          Surveys

-          E-marketing

-          Focus groups

In the end, this is the kind of research I used, seeing I ended up using surveys. I also used quantitative research since I was looking to see the ammount of people who wanted to see the film due to the poster(s).

Secondary research

Secondary research (also known as desk research) involves the summary, collation and/or synthesis (In short, Combination) of existing research rather than primary research (In which you go out or hire someone to get the research), where data is collected from, for example, research subjects or experiments, or even the general public.

The term is widely used in medical research and in market research. The principal methodology (If i have to explain THIS word, Just hit yourself for me.) in medical secondary research is the systematic review, commonly using meta-analytic ("How it should be or is" Research or studying) statistical techniques, although other methods of synthesis (A part of combining, Mixing the ingredients into one, Often used in fiction when creating potions), like realist reviews and meta-narrative ("How a Story or event recorded is") reviews, have been developed in recent years. Such secondary research uses the primary research of others typically in the form of research publications and reports.

In a market research context, secondary research is taken to include the re-use by a second party of any data collected by a first party or parties.

In archaeology and landscape history, desk research is contrasted with fieldwork. In short, Secondary is finding about it from a library, While Primary is going and trying to find something.

Sometimes secondary research is required in the preliminary (First) stages of research to determine what is known already and what new data is required, or to inform research design. At other times, it may be the only research technique used. Depends on how much information is needed, or if you are using alternative methods aswell, such as primary.

A key performance area in secondary research is the full citation of original sources, usually in the form of a complete listing or annotated listing.

Secondary sources could include previous research reports, newspaper, magazine and journal content, and government and NGO statistics.

Methods of secondary research

-          Internal

a.      Epos (electronic product of sale) E.G. Tills, Stocks

b.      Loyalty card

c.      Website stats

d.     Accounts

Warning: The next two segments are VERY word heavy. 

Quantitative research

In the social sciences, quantitative research refers to the systematic empirical (Relying on or derived from observation or experiment (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/empirical) investigation of social phenomena (Random events) via statistical, mathematical or computational (Calculating) techniques. The objective of quantitative research is to work on and Use mathematical models, theories and/or hypotheses pertaining to phenomena. Measurement of the statistics is central to quantitative research because it provides the fundamental connection between empirical observation and mathematical expression of quantitative relationships. 

Quantitative data is any data that is in numerical form such as statistics, percentages, etc. In layman's terms, this means that the quantitative researcher asks a specific, narrow question and collects numerical data from participants to answer the question. The researcher analyzes the data with the help of statistics. The researcher is hoping the numbers will yield an unbiased result that can be generalized to some larger population. Qualitative research, on the other hand, asks broad questions and collects word data from participants. The researcher looks for themes and describes the information in themes and patterns exclusive to that set of participants.

Quantitative research is used widely in social sciences such as psychology, economics, sociology, and political science, and less frequently in anthropology and history. Research in mathematical sciences such as physics is also 'quantitative' by definition, though this use of the term differs in context. In the social sciences, the term relates to empirical methods, originating in both philosophical positivism and the history of statistics, which contrast qualitative research methods.

Qualitative methods produce information only on the particular cases studied, and any more general conclusions are only hypotheses. Quantitative methods can be used to verify which of such hypotheses are true.

A comprehensive analysis of 1274 articles published in the top two American sociology journals between 1935 and 2005 found that roughly two thirds of these articles used quantitative methods. (This is just here for an estimation on how many were bits of research used Quantitative methods)

These are often seen through Use of surveys, Ratings, readership circulation figures, hits on a website, box office figures, and DVD/CD Sales.

For this, I ended up using Surveys, as mentioned above in the primary section. I also used this as it ended up covering what I wanted to know.

Qualitative Research

Qualitative research is a method of inquiry employed in many different academic disciplines, traditionally in the social sciences, but also in market research and further contexts. Qualitative researchers aim to gather an in-depth understanding of human behavior and the reasons that govern such behavior. The qualitative method investigates the why and how of decision making, not just what, where, when. Hence, smaller but focused samples are more often needed than large samples.

In the conventional view, qualitative methods produce information only on the particular cases studied, and any more general conclusions are only propositions (informed assertions). Quantitative methods can then be used to seek empirical support for such research hypotheses.  It is argued that qualitative methods and case study research may be used both for hypotheses-testing and for generalizing beyond the particular cases studied.

Examples of qualitative research are film reviews, Game reviews, fanzine websites, attitudes to media products, responses to news coverage, responses to advertising campaigns and discussion in general.

In my research during this whole project was the reviews I looked at for the film. Namely, Rotten tomatoes.

Purposes of research:

Audience and market research

This kind of research is essentially looking to the people, and asking them what they like and so forth. we do this by collecting audience data and profiling through methods such as surveys and so forth.

Demographics are groups of people, and their general opinion on things. Examples are gamers, Religous groups, and even workers. Geo-demographics are essentially a similar thing, exept instead of using groups as mentioned earlier, It uses whole locations, Ranging from cities, to countries.

Then, there is consumer behaviour and attituded, which obviously is how the consumer reacts to certain things, like how a group of fantasy film lovers would react to In the name of the king: A dungeon siege tale. Any research would indicate that people despised it due to how far they strayed from the source material, And it ended up with people not buying the DVD. This ended up being a good point of research for future films, should their producers and directors want any ideas on what to avoid.

In the creation of the prezi, I ended up looking at demographics, and consumer behaviour and attitudes. I also collected Audience data.

Production Research

This is essentially  research that i ended up covering in the previous segment. this includes how much we will need to pay, who you need to pay, advertising, Resources available (Such as editing software and voice recording software).

This also includes the viability of certain locations, these can range from studios, to open environments like mountain ranges.

Though I cannot say I really done any in this assignment, I can say in my previous bit of work, O ended up using all of the things mentioned above, seeing as they are all key parts of making a film.

Assessing research Data:

Reliability

This is essentially how relyable certain bit of information can be. This information can range from surveys to questionnaires, since it usually involves asking/testing alot of people. in order to find this out, you need to ask a specific demographic, and see if they have a similar outlook on the product in question.

Validity

To check how valid any bit of research is, you need to ask the right kind of questions, such as if your doing questions about a movie poster, you need to ask how they feel about the poster and whether they think it fits with the film. this can be achieved by using surveys or questionnaires. Questionnaires would be better, since you are giving them more of a chance to give their opinion.

Representativeness and generalisability

I would say with what I have done, the participants of my questionnaire asked were the original kind of target audience. I would also say that the data obtained was generalizable, since it was at a decent group targeted. Though, I cannot really say that my own poster was liked more than the older one, since both were equal.