Research Types

Media companies often use a mixture of quantitative, qualitative, primary and secondary research methods when producing a new media product. This ensures that they have a wide range of data to analyse in the pre-production stage of a product before going a head into the production phase in order to make the best product possible.

QUANTITATIVE

Quantitative research involves numerical and statistical data This format of information has many pros compared to qualitative research such as the fact that it is quick, easy to collect and simple to analyse and gain useful results from. However, a downfall of this type of research would be that people are not always truthful, for they may choose their answers at random due to them having no opinion on the matter which can cause the data to be inaccurate.

An example of a quantitative research method would be through the use of a numerical scale with about four or five options, such as the likert scale, where there is a limited choice of options that someone can choose from.

QUALITATIVE

Qualitative research involves research that is mostly opinion based which requires a bit more thought on the half of the participant when answering questions, but provides data that is considered more deeply and therefore gives producers more personal ideas on how to go about making their product or making the product better. However, this type of data is more difficult to analyse compared to quantitative research which can sometimes be tricky to interpret into a straightforward response as a whole and people may not tell the truth due to being put on the spot.

An example of qualitative research would be focus groups or interviews where participants are asked how they felt about a particular product.

PRIMARY

Primary research is data that has never existed before that the company produces themselves through the means of their own qualitative and quantitative research. The reliability of this type of research is generally high due to the fact that the data is up to date and from known sources, however it also depends on the type and methods of research.

SECONDARY

Secondary research is research that you have not produced yourself but have sought from other sources, such as from a book or online. It can be useful for it saves time and costs on researching and conducting your own interviews and questionnaires for example, but may not always be reliable due to the fact that we can never be sure that the information is up to date and collected in an unbiased, controlled way.

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