Other Forms Of Research

What are the benefits/drawbakcks of each?

Experiments - A test to see if something is true: A benefit of using this method is that it is reliable and factual. As you can see the results for yourself. Although you would need a controlled group and also you would need a different group of people, given the same information and see how they perform. A drawback to this method is that an experiment is essentially a set up, therefore it may not be in a real-life situation.

Participant Observation - The researcher participates in the activity in order to better understand it. A benfit of ususing this methos is that you get a clearer understanding of what you are researching. You are personally participating in your research as apposed to just reading it or researching online. A drawback to this method is that the researcher can have a biast opinion.

Kalan Bailey’s like omg this is soo freakin’ cool  audience research questionnaire 

We had to re-do a questionnare that Miss Tomlinson gave to us with ten mistakes for us to rectify. Some of the problems with the questionnare was that the questions were very vague so we had to re-write them because you wouldnt be satisfied with the information you would have gained from them. Many people who do the questionnare may lie or put false information because they may feel its a waste of their time and may want to rush trhough it. I replaced "name" with "age" & "gender" because some of the questions were personal which would entise people to lie!       

Why and how do media companies use research?

Things you would research in the media?

• Target audience and how many people are going to buy your magazine?

• Who is your competition?

• How are you going distribute it?

• How are you going to price it in relation to its target audience?

• What content is going to be in the magazine?

Selling your magazine to your target audience is just as important as selling to your advertisers.


IPC use audience profiling to clearly describe the audience to advertisers in order to gain funding/sponsors to help fund and support the magazine.

From the IPC website, we are shown the different areas of audience profiling used to help define the target audience to possible advertisers for the NME magazine;

Demographics (facts and fingures in relation to mdeia researc) such as -

• Key statistics: Eg percentage of - Age, gender, social class (ABC 1, percentage of students readers, circulation of the magazine, readership (how many people read the magazine).

Psycographics (social/political responses found through media researc) such as -

• Mobile: promotes the use of mobile techonology - advertisements
• Music and film - in relation to the target audiences and their responses to the regular music and film updates
• quotes fromn regular readers, eg "The NME is damn honest" - NME Reader

Social media research

Social Media Research is a technique used to gain product knowledge using online networking sites eg: Facebook and Twitter. Compare such as 'Simple' and 'Coca Cola' have used this method in order to make major product decisions. For example - Coca Cola made the decision to with the distribution and production of 'Coca Cola Vainilla' in 2006 following poor sales and response from the target audience. On the contray 'Simple' used social media research to request opinions on future products which lead top the introduction of new nip balm products which appealed to their target audience. The advantages of social media is the speed at which responses are received and action can be taked. As well as it is is incredibly cheap.

Research Methods

There are two kinds of research, Primary and Secondary. Primary: Comes straight from the source, e.g. if you find a Blackberry. Survey, Interviews (Market Research), focus groups (groups of people discussing a product), observation/empirical (first hand to see whats happening), forums to find out what consaumers really think of a product. Secondary: Comes from someone else, e.g. you wrote about the person finding the Blackberry. Books, internet, Media Gaurdian & Telegrapgh Technology Section, film or documentaries, Radio 4 Media Show (podcast)

You would use both forms of research for reliabilty and if you see the same information you would think that it would most likely be true.
Are magazines representing ethnic minorities failry?

'Instyle' magazine 2009

Black:15
Latino:9
Asian:2
White:272

What type of research was used? Primary research was used, empirical research.
What were your findings? A very high majority were white, which could be because of the target audience and class, but overall there was not a fair mix of ethnicity totalling 26.
How could you have improved your research? Looking at other magazines from different years to see how it has changed.
What was good and bad about the research technique you used? Our empirical primary research was good because we counted for ourselves, to see how many ethnicities there was. It was bad because we found difficult to distinguish between races, being that some of the white people were extremely tanned. Also we should have maybe made more catergories as some people had more than one etchnic background.