Method of Research

The most common method of audience research is the survey. But as well as surveys, there are many other methods of audience research, including observation, mechanical measurement (people-meters) and qualitative research. For any activity to be carried out well, some form of feedback is needed. In recent years, the study of management methods has produced a system known as "strategic management." It follows the principles shown in the diagram.

The Need of Audience Research

To know the size of audience

To understand and collect data on viewing and listening behavior or pattern

To determine who are the station’s viewer

Advertising purposes

To determine types of programming and scheduling

To evaluate the local market and potential outside of boundaries market.

Categories of research

Qualitative research

Quantitative research

Historical critical

Experimental

Content Analysis

Survey

Qualitative research

Qualitative research is designed to reveal a target audience’s range of behavior and the perceptions that drive it with reference to specific topics or issues. It uses in-depth studies of small groups of people to guide and support the construction of hypotheses. The results of qualitative research are descriptive rather than predictive.

Qualitative methods include in-depth interviews with individuals, group discussions (from two to ten participants is typical); diary and journal exercises; and in-context observations. It involves intimate interaction with a smaller number of participants. The goal is to uncover feelings, perceptions, and attitudes about a topic

Methodologies for qualitative research include:

Traditional focus groups

Telephone focus groups

Online focus groups

Individual in-depth interviews

Ethnography

Quantitative research

Quantitative research typically involves large-scale data gathering. In most cases, the results of a quantitative research study can be reliably projected to a larger population. A common sample size for a consumer quantitative study is 300 - 1,000. Quantitative research used structured format.

Methodologies for quantitative research include:

Telephone surveys

Internet surveys

Mail surveys

Historical critical

Examining documents to gather information for example interpreting ancient texts

Experimental

Different research paradigms serve different purposes. It may with benefit be used in some situations.

Most likely to be appropriate when you do not know where to start, and do not have a lot of time to invest in the study. It is useful for exploratory research, where you do not yet have a very precise research question.

Content Analysis

Content analysis focused on the actual content and internal features of media. It determine the presence of certain words, concepts, themes, phrases, characters, or sentences within texts or sets of texts. Texts can be defined broadly as books, book chapters, essays, interviews, discussions, newspaper headlines and articles, historical documents, speeches, conversations, advertising, theater, informal conversation, or really any occurrence of communicative language.

To conduct a content analysis on a text, the text is coded, or broken down, into manageable categories on a variety of levels--word, word sense, phrase, sentence, or theme. The results are then used to make inferences about the messages within the text(s), the writer(s), the audience, and even the culture and time. For example, Content Analysis can indicate features such as the intentions, biases, prejudices, and oversights of authors, publishers, as well as all other persons responsible for the content of materials.

Survey

On-line surveys have been found to be as effective as more traditional forms of survey research.

Questions are presented to users on their computer screens. Surveys of this type are inexpensive to administer, provide data in a format ready for statistical computer programs, and can yield results relatively quickly. It can be designed to protect the privacy of respondents, an important consideration when designing research involving human subjects.

Questionnaire surveys

A questionnaire is a data-gathering device that elicits from a respondent the answers or reactions to pre-arranged questions presented in a specific order. Questionnaires are flexible and adaptable to a variety of research designs, populations and purposes.

Questionnaire need to be designed and carried out carefully so that they provide a genuine reflection of the attitudes and beliefs of a group of people.

Sampling

Determine your population and the type of sampling you intend to carry out.

Beware of the cliche random sampling - pure random sampling is rare, expensive and very difficult to guarantee.

A guiding rule is: the more homogeneous the population, the smaller the sample needs to be to accurately reflect the characteristics of that population.

Another is the degree of precision or number of variables you want to test. These factors account for variation in response:

• social class


• religion


• race


• sex


• age