SUMMARY

What I've learnt from this is that Primary, Secondary, Qualitative and Quantitative research are all very important factors in both media and gaming industry, they do all this research before they release the product so that they would find out what people would like to see in the product that they want to release, they also do this through out the production to see if everything is fine and running they also do this when it has been released to see if people like it and if there is any type of improvement to be done to the product this is an on going process all four types of research are vital in the media and gaming industry as they are a way for the company to improve their products. In the gaming industry they have a separate version of the game called BETA its an experimental version of a game or a software, they usually have problems in this version so then the company will know what the problem and where the problem is in their product, through this they will be able to rework the problems and issues of the product before they can release the finished product.   

INTRODUCTION

I have applied for a job as a researcher in a good local media company. As part of the selection process they have asked me to create a blog for them on the nature and purposes of research for creative media production. In my blog i will describe the main types, methods and sources of research that can be used in a research project and the main purposes of research in the creative media.

In this assignment i will be focusing on these four research methods.

• primary research
• secondary research 
• qualitative research 
• quantitative research

I will also include the advantages and disadvantages of primary and secondary.

QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH

Quantitative research

quantitative research is a type of research that will give you number based results. If your doing a questionnaire with closed questions it will give you  number based results, closed questions are responded with answers that are already there for example yes or no these types of questions give you no freedom to answer in your own words whatsoever. There are a couple of methods that you could use to obtain quantitative results by doing surveys, questionnaires and phone pols.

The image above is an example of a type of audience research, this site shows how many people play the game and the percentage of the gender the plays it. here's a link to the site where i got the information from. 
http://www.iabuk.net/blog/10-uk-video-game-audience-stats

Quantitative research is very important in both media and games industry because if they need to produce a new product they would want to know what the people want but in a more of a statistical and numerical point of view. 
The image above says that there are more women playing games than men in the UK this is quantitative data because it has numbers and percentages they determined this statement by doing a survey.   

  

QUALITATIVE RESEARCH

Qualitative Research

Qualitative research is mostly used by market researchers; unlike quantitative research that looks at people views statistically and numerically instead this type of research looks more into peoples's views and opinions and the overall behavior of a person towards certain products and topic's it can be about anything, it could be a new movie or game, an app and even new computer software's. Gathering qualitative research can be done in many ways but each method looks at a specific type of data. If it was in a questionnaire it would be the opposite of quantitative research as the questions that qualitative research would ask are open questions these types of questions give you the freedom to put or write anything you want in you own words. Qualitative Research would definitely be beneficial in the gaming industry because in a situation like releasing a new game, after a week or two they would want to know what people think about the game whether they like it or not or if there's any improvement that the could done to make the game better they get this information by creating forums based on their game.

 

The image above is a type of Qualitative Research because it is taking in peoples opinions about their product. This is a game review on the released game Hyrule Warrior, this is good because the company that's asking for peoples opinions are getting really good reviews on the game they have released, this type of research is very useful because it allows people to give their opinions and its also good for the company because they can improve the game the way people like it. I got this information from a site called GameSpot they do reviews and forums on games, gaming devices and other stuff. This type of research is very important to both media and gaming industry as they would want to know what people think about the product they have made and what aspect of that product they have to improve.  

SECONDARY RESEARCH

Secondary Research 

secondary research is the complete opposite of primary research because your using someone else's information. Some examples of secondary research are the internet (Wikipedia), books, newspapers and magazines, you have o use one of these depending on the information you need, for example if you wanted to do a questionnaire on celebrities you would go on the internet as the first option the next option is magazines or newspaper because they are updated everyday most people wold use a book but now that the internet exists it has been what most people turn to first because the internet is faster and you can find the information you need just by pressing a few buttons whilst in books you would have to find the nearest library and if its far you would need to pay money to get on a bus to get there and also pay money for the book that your going to borrow also you wont always be safe when your on your way to the library.

The image above is an example of secondary research. I got this grid from the site called BARB short for Broadcasters Audience Research Board this site gathers the TV ratings and viewer figures of TV channels. This shows the top ten most viewed shows in this channel by the thousand.

Advantages:

• Its easy because the internet is only a click away meaning you don't have to go around asking everyone for their precious time. 
• Sometimes you get news paper dropped in your mail so you don't have to pay for anything.
• Some books and magazines are cheaper than others also you don't have to waste any paper by making questionnaires.
• It takes less time than making a questionnaire so it's not too time consuming.   

Disadvantages

• The information that get aren't always as reliable as it should be.
  
  
• The source that you're getting your information from might be giving you false information.
• Some sites are not updated and you don't know if the information you got is recent or old.
• Not everyone will have internet set up in their home as it is quite expensive. 

PRIMARY RESEARCH

Primary Research

Primary research is when an individual finds information without using other information from the internet like Wikipedia, books or newspapers one way you could do primary research is by doing  questionnaires or surveys this is primary research because you’re getting information from people through something that you made yourself. These are the methods you could use as primary research for example doing a face to face interview with people, focus group, observations and phone interviews. Primary Research is very important in the media industry like if a games company needs to create a new game, to do this first of all  they will need to know what types of games their audience wants so that they can evaluate the results  and create a game based on the results that they have acquired from their target audience so that they can create he game their audiences want they can do this by doing a questionnaire as it is a popular method but also it is easy and it gives specific answers.   

Here is an example of a questionnaire or a survey but this isn't just any questionnaire that you get on paper this is an online questionnaire, as you can see it is asking you if you are satisfied or dissatisfied the closed questions are questions that you can only yes or no to but it's not just yes or no, closed questions only give you limited answers unlike open questions it gives you the freedom to put anything you want. I got this questionnaire as an example from a site called Vanguard Vista this example questionnaire was a part of a step by step walkthrough on how to set up a survey or a quiz.  

Advantages: 

• You get the information yourself meaning if anything goes wrong yo don't have to blame it on other people if something goes wrong.  
• You get the information you want from the questions that you give to the people you want the answers from like the target audience.
• You can trust the results you got yourself. 

Disadvantages:

• Primary research like questionnaires can be expensive depending on how many answers you want to back up your information.
• Primary research like interviews and focus groups is time consuming for you and for the people you want to interview. 
• Sometimes people lie about their answers making your results unreliable.