Media Research

Primary Research

Primary and secondary research techniques are essential parts of preparing for a project. Primary research is done from firsthand experience. Data is collected through conducting questionnaires, surveys, interviews, and completing textual analyses of already existing products similar to the intended outcome of the project, in order to gain an idea of content that has been achievable and well received by an audience from acclaimed products, be they movie trailers, magazines or short films.

Advantages of Primary Audience Research

• When conducting questionnaires among focus groups, this gives the researcher an insight into the potential audience for their product. The questionnaires must be focused on people from your intended audience, be they teenagers, children, adults, people interested in certain topics, anything that would be relatable to the product. 

• This gives accurate data on your demographic and will also dictate the majority of the content in the product to be more accessible to the target audience. 

• It is a quick and easy way to get information from a focus group.

Disadvantages of Primary Audience Research

• The results are not always reliable, as only a few questions that can be interpreted in many different ways may not give a clear idea of what the audience really wants. 

• The fact that these are quick and easy, they are not always taken seriously by the audience, which may result in unreliable data.

Secondary Research

Secondary research is the type of research that involves acquiring and compiling data from external sources, most popularly the Internet. The research is done by looking up already existing data and using it to aid in the determining of your final product. Already existing research can include online polls to gauge audience opinion about a certain topic, online reviews for film, broadcast fiction, print, anything. 

Advantages of Secondary Research

• Secondary research is much easier to get ahold of than primary research, and a higher quantity can be collected in a shorter amount of time. 

• There is a wide variety of research can has been done on one detail of a production, which can be translated into your own product accordingly.

• Reviews, for example, are often very detailed, often pointing out exactly what was effective and/or ineffective about the product. This gives the researcher a clear idea of what the target audience is looking for, provided the review is for a similar product to yours.

Disadvantages of Secondary Research

• Secondary research can be very easily manipulated, and therefore may not be an accurate representation of audience opinion.

• The time at which the research was conducted is also very important, as research tends to be rendered outdated within only a few years. It's important to collect the most recently conducted research possible.

• As is the case with primary research, the questions can be interpreted in many different ways, which may result in inaccurate responses, which are a poor representation of the intended target audience, as well as the audience not taking responses seriously.

• As for online reviews, unless the reviewer's basic stats, such as age range, gender, location or any other defining data, one can never be certain exactly who is writing the review, and whether or not they are even included in the product's target audience.