Joe Hardy Level 3 EXT Diploma In Media and Games Design

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Assignment 1

Introduction to research within the creative media Industries.

There are 2 Main types of Research, these are:

Quantitative – The use of Numerical Data (numbers) to obtain information to work out

how much of something there is, e.g. how many red cars go past a certain point every hour

or how many hours do people spend watching television in a week.

Qualitative – The use of Non-Numerical Data (Words) to obtain information to find out

if something is there, e.g. what a person’s favourite food is or what is your favourite car.

Contents

Quantitative research in depth – Page 2

Qualitative research in depth – Page 2

Types of Sampling – Page 2

Types of Research – Page 4

How Research is used Within Media – Page 4

Conclusion - Page 5

Bibliography – Page 6

Joe Hardy Level 3 EXT Diploma In Media and Games Design

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Quantitative Research In depth

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.

[1].

Quantitative research is very useful in a wide variety of circumstances, it can be compiled into

tables easily and no matter how big the sample is it remains concise as whichever answer was

chosen by an individual that answer becomes a number and not an answer i.e.

3000 people from a random sample were asked if they were female or male, 1467 said female, 1533

said male.

This keeps the results concise because it can be done as such, no matter the sample size, each

person just adds to the number who fell into the same category as themselves.

Qualitative Research In Depth

Qualitative research is a form of questioning using close–ended questions, it is useful in many

different applications, and recently since the inception of media is used in market research.[2] the

problem with close-ended questions is that the possible number of answers is almost infinite and

thus compiling the results into a compact format cam be quite difficult. 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, rather than large samples.[3]

Types of Sampling

There are three different types of sampling:

Random

Stratified

Systematic

Random:

The selection of individuals in a completely random way, taking individuals not based on any way of

choosing individuals but selecting people not based on age, gender, ethnicity or disability, this is an

excellent way of sampling but has a few drawbacks, due to its completely random nature the

selection could accidentally choose a huge amount of 1 type of individual and not many of another

e.g. you could accidentally end up with only 10% being male and 90% as female, which can affect the

results quite dramatically. However this does give all groups the fair possibility of being chosen [4]

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Stratified:

When a population has a number of distinct groups, these groups can be organised into separate

“strata”. Each “strata” is then treated as a sub-population and is sampled individually and elements

of the individual populations can be sampled as well.

Stratified sampling has several advantages:

Dividing the population into individual groups allows researchers to come to conclusions

that would otherwise be lost in a more general population.

Stratified sampling can lead to more efficient results provided that the individual groups are

based upon criteria in the research rather than availability of the populations, and even if it

were based upon availability it would not produce less efficient results than random

sampling so long as the group’s sizes proportionally represented the population as a whole.

The individual groups can be subjected to different forms of sampling in order to find out

which the best is and which is cost effective.

However with these advantages come some disadvantages:

Can be expensive to implement.

Not useful in populations where there are no sub-groups.

Requires the groups to be split up into relevant size and strata which can be difficult.

Systematic:

This relies on using a system to choose how many and at what point you collect this data, this

sampling is hard to explain so here is an example.

Example: Suppose we wish to sample people from a long street that starts in a poor district (house

#1) and ends in an expensive district (house #1000). A simple random selection of addresses from this

street could easily end up with too many from the high end and too few from the low end (or vice

versa), leading to an unrepresentative sample. Selecting (e.g.) every 10th street number along the

street ensures that the sample is spread evenly along the length of the street, representing all of

these districts. (Note that if we always start at house #1 and end at #991, the sample is slightly

biased towards the low end; by randomly selecting the start between #1 and #10, this bias is

eliminated.) [5]

This is a very good form of sampling as it allows for a range of all the groups individually however if

the groups aren’t spread evenly across the population you do not get an accurate range of the true

population meaning this technique is only feasible in certain situation, but it is cheap to use as all u

do is take the range and split it into subsections 1 in 10 maybe or whatever is needed in the

situation.

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Types of Research

There are two types of research:

Primary research (also called field research) involves the collection of data that does not already

exist, which is research to collect original data. Primary Research is often undertaken after the

researcher has gained some insight into the issue by collecting secondary data. This can be through

numerous forms, including questionnaires, direct observation and telephone interviews amongst

others.[6]

Secondary research (also called desk research) involves the collection and collation of data that

already exists, usually done prior to primary research to give the researcher(s) insight into the field

they want to research, this can be done by scouring journals, the internet, newspapers, manuscripts,

research publications etc.[7]

How Research Is Used Within Media

There are several ways research is used within the media industry; I will outline them over the next

section.

Target market research:

Fairly straight forward research in order to ascertain to which audience your product is going to be

aimed towards, usually the one that will give the most profit or seem to, this can be in the of age,

content wanted in the media, country if it’s an international project and so on. This is important as it

is unwise to release a product to a niche as the number of people who will buy that product is

limited so possible profits are diminished.

Pre-production research:

Researching where to create the media product is important, do u need a green screen? Do you

need permission to film if it’s a film you are producing, what is your budget and how much will it

cost to produce the product you want, how much do other similar products cost, what could the

consumer end price be, what are other companies doing (I mean what’s the point in producing a

product that someone else is going to release sooner at a reduced cost and that’s better?)

I know all that was a lot to take in in one paragraph however all that is necessary before even

beginning to produce your product, and it is all research, as you can see this is all very fundamentally

important because if these aren’t researched then any one of them can critically damage any

chances of profit, and in the current economic climate it can be catastrophic if something goes

wrong.

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Post production Research:

Finding out how well your product is selling, beta testing, what the ‘hype’ for your product is (that is

to say how excited people are for the public release of your product), average age of buyers and

users of the product, all of these are important if you want to keep track of profits or find out y your

product isn’t selling as well as initial research might suggest.

Market Research:

Research of the current market to see what sells the most of the product you want, to see what’s

popular to consumers, and to see how other companies are responding to this as well.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it is obvious just how important research is within media, but also just how difficult

research is to carry out, it’s not just a questionnaire handed out to 10 people, sometimes it can be

months or years of constant vigilance just to find out what product to make. Research allows us to

extrapolate possible outcomes of the product (estimate what will happen to the product) after

launch, now of course this is not 100% accurate but, it does give an idea. If you believe research

after reading this, to be unimportant, a waste of time and resources, then I invite you to try and

develop your idea and release it without researching at all, now obviously it could become a major

hit if you’re lucky, but those odds are increased if you have an idea of the current market and other

competition.

Joe Hardy Level 3 EXT Diploma In Media and Games Design

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Bibliography

[1] Hunter, Laura and Erin Leahey. (2008) Collaborative Research in Sociology: Trends and

Contributing Factors. American Sociologist issue 39, pages 290–306.

[2] C.Wright Mills (1959). The Sociological Imagination.

[3] Wikipedia, Qualitative research, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualitative_research (as of Oct. 3,

2010, 12:15 GMT).

[4] Wikipedia, Sampling (statistics), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_(statistics) (as of Oct. 7,

2010, 11:30 GMT).

[5] Wikipedia, Sampling (statistics), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_(statistics) (as of Oct. 7,

2010, 11:30 GMT).

[6] Wikipedia, Primary research, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_research (as of Oct. 7, 2010,

14:01 GMT).

[7] Adapted from Wikipedia, Secondary research, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_research

(as of Oct. 7, 2010, 14:10 GMT).