Research Methods

Primary Research- Direct form of research, something you find yourself.
Primary Research used in the media institution is:
Surveys, Interviews, Questionnaires, Market Research, Focus Groups (when a group of people get together to discuss chosen subjects, people are chosen in relation to their target audience), One on One interview (a much personal and in depth type of research method; different from the focus group), Observation (observing peoples), Empirical (any sort of research that is observable i.e behaviour, i.e I'm doing some empirical research), Direct contact of producers of a media text, Chat Rooms

Secondary Research- Research found indirectly from the source, information that you get from someone else.
SecondaryResearch used in the media institution is:

• Books, Internet, Specialized Articles (Media Guardian; Telegraph and Technology Section)
• Radio 4 (Media Show)
• Podcast, Films

Why do we need more than one research method?? Using more than one source makes the research more reliable. We can find research from secondary research which we didn't find in primary to back up our research. The research is more accurate and reliable.

Done an exercise in relation to content analysis. Looking through magazines and finding out if magazines represents ethnic minorities fairly. My group found that in our magazine the ratio of white people to black people were about 7 to 1. People were represented unfairly; in the beginning of the magazine all adverts promoting brands like Chanel or Gucci were modeled by white people but by the middle of the magazine you were introduced to black people as make up artist and helpers.
Although we had some findings, in regards to research our findings weren't accurate. We only analysed one magazine and made assumptions. We didn't know what the overall ratio of ethnic minorities were in magazines. We could have improved our research by viewing other magazines and comparing our findings. We could have also improved our research by analysing a variety of ethnicity groups when carrying out or quantitative research. If we were to look at the ratio of black people to mixed race people to Asian people etc we would of had a clearer and more in depth result.
What was good about this research was that is was very simple. It didn't require any sort of hard work or money. For such a quick technique it resulted in a lot of information. What was bad about this research technique was that although it was simple, results were somewhat complicated. Because the research wasn't so in depth we had to make up our own accusations as to why we think things are done as opposed to having concrete information.