Types of Research

Primary Research

Primary Research is where you collect the information your self rather than looking online or in books etc. This can be done in an variety of ways. Here are some examples of primary research; 

Face to face communication
Verbal communication with someone is one of the main popular ways on how to get primary research this can be when you are having one to one talks to gather the information you need.
An example of this in media industry would be talking to someone about your game to get feedback etc. An benefit of using this type of primary research is that you are able to judge the person you are talking to on their body language. 
This helps provide a some sort of non-verbal communication this is a advantage because it allows you to see their emotions about the question/games. It gives you the profit to ask different questions depending on their answer.For example if you ask a question like "do you like the character in the game" and they say yes you would be able to ask "why and what do you like about the character" but if they say no you are able to ask another question like "How do you think I can change the character?". This is an advantage because you don't have to stay to a piece of paper, you are able to ask anything and everything to do with your game allowing you to gather a lot of different information from different people.

Image link: https://junyiaud.wordpress.com/


surveys

An survey can either be done digitally by a computer, Over the Phone, Email or even in person. A survey is one of the most Popular ways to gather information from individuals in a structured format. A structured format is where each individual will get asked the same questions which will all be collected and analysed to gather the information needed.
Surveys are usually created to gather information such as opinions and feedback. For example in a media industry a survey might be important to use when attempting to gather information from individuals. The survey could have questions such as "What feature in a game do you find most important." Or another example might be "What do you expect from an first person shooter game?".  
There is quite a lot of Advantages of using surveys to collect primary research. One of the main advantages is how easy it is to create and design a survey. Surveys can be developed in a lot of different format's and in a lot of different software. Making each survey more unique and flexible which will make it easier for the company to get the information they desire. Surveys can be created by phone, paper or online. This allows the researches to easily create a survey however it should depend on the type of study and who the audience is. For example Online surveys can easily be shared in social media, email or advertising. If the survey is trying to gather information from 13-18 years old the servery will have to be suitable for their age and then share the survey on websites most popular to the target age audience for example Facebook or twitter.
Another benefit of how easy it is to create a survey is how you can take control of the answer's. For example in a survey you can design it so when a participant answers it will either be in a drop box format, multiple choice, single text box, Multiple text box etc. This provides the researcher to take control of the answers for example if they want a simple answer for a question they can format it in a drop down which allows the participant to click one of the provided answers. Also if the researcher wanted a more detailed answer they are able to change it to a more suitable format which will allow the participant to give as much detail as needed. 

 I created an example survey online by using survey monkey. In my survey I created several random questions. However On some questions I used a different format. For example questions 4, 5 and 6 are all built differently. 
Each build up allows the participant to give their answers in a certain way.
Question 4 is called a 'drop box'. It allows the participant to click on the arrow option which then drops a box listing answer's. Allowing the participant to choose one answer.
Question 5 is called  'ranking'. This basically creates a ranking system which allows the participants to put the answers in their preferred ranking order. For example in my survey it basically asked the participant to rank the three music artist. In a media industry it would make questions such as "Which of these three features do you find most important within a game?".


Question 6 is called Multiple choice. This is the most common way to build an question in a online survey. It list's the answers and allows the participant to choose one of the answers.

Although online surveys are easy and flexible to build and create They might not be as effective. For example 89.9% Of the UK's population uses the internet and online you cant always control who is filling out your survey. This means that some of the respondents are hard to reach and may be easier to reach by phone, paper surveys or even face to face contact.

Paper surveys are quite different to online surveys. Paper surveys are done on paper which means that their is a limited way on how to present your survey. For example online surveys gives you the ability to change the build up of a question which I have just explained above. This is a disadvantage because it might make the survey look more unprofessional. However paper surveys are great because it gives more control on who your audience is. For example if your target age is 13-16 then the researcher can go to high schools and give the survey out. Or if the survey is about a certain shop E.g Tesco then the researcher will be able to stand outside Tesco and give the survey out then. A benefit of doing this is that it will give the researcher more of a better response to their surveys.
However a main disadvantage of using the paper method to gather information from a survey is the cost and time. Paper surveys can either be written or be done by computer then printed out. Doing this will cost money for the essentials for example paper and ink which can also be quite time consuming. Although the main time consuming part is trying to get participants for the survey. There are different methods of giving out surveys and trying to get someone to fill the survey. One of the methods is going to people's house's, This is a good method because it allows the survey to go to a certain demography but it's unlikely that someone is going to answer and participate. Another method is standing in a popular place such as a shopping center and give out the surveys. An benefit of this method is that it allows the researcher to personally give out the survey however it is also difficult to get someone to participate within a busy place and can result in rushed answers.
Image Link: http://www.snapsurveys.com/survey-software/paper-surveys/

Once all of the information is gathered from the surveys it is important that the results are analysed. For example in the survey I created online it automatically did an summery from my answers. however if the answers are from a paper survey it will be a lot more time consuming a bit more difficult for example the research will have to collect and summarize the results which can be difficult because of different reasons such as a wide range of a different answers or difficult to read hand writing which can result in an survey being read wrong.
After each individual is analysed the researcher can collect each individual's data and do a question summarize sheet which will allows the researcher to see the answers in graph's etc. An advantage of doing this is that it will make the information easier to understand and it means that the researcher can see the most popular answer. For example if the media industry sent out 5 surveys asking what game genre do they prefer and their main response was Action then it means that their target audience is mainly attracted to games with a action genre.

 In conclusion Surveys are easy, can be observed online e.g phone, designed effectively, can collect information from a large number of participants and are some-what free to make. However the answers in a survey may be rushed and not honest. The survey could be ignored/Thrown away and the answers may be unclear or not enough information provided.


Secondary Research

Secondary Research is finding/gathering information that is already provided from someone or something else. It is not your own research. Secondary Research can be collected in many different ways. Here are some examples of secondary research;

Text Book's 

A text book can be found in area's such as a library, A Book shop etc. Reading a book is one of the most popular/Effective methods to gather information because you are able to read the  book as many times as needed for free or for a cheap amount of money.
Reading a book to gather information is secondary research because the book was already made by someone else. The author of the book has already gathered up and analysed the results and then published it into the book. Making the book some one else's research.
Although a text book is someone else's research, it still provides many advantages.
Getting a text book is easy and can be done in many ways for example going to a library, getting the book delivered or even buying the text book from a local shop for a low cost. It also means that the researcher can collect information much more quickly for example instead of making a survey to find out information that may then be answered dishonestly. They can just go to a local library etc. and find a book which can give the researcher the exact information they are looking for. This can save a lot of time and money compared to some methods in a primary research which could be using in a media industry in different ways.
This method in an media industry can be beneficial because they can save time/money to find information although the information wouldn't be as 'personal'. For example the media industry could look at a text book explaining how different features have different effects however it might not tell them what type of feature their audience wants within their games E.g. in a survey you are able to ask personal questions which will give them a direct answer from their audience/Customer resulting in a more effective answer towards the company.





Internet/Online
Online research is one of the most popular methods used in secondary research. This is simply because the internet is used by almost 40% of the worlds population. Which means  easy access to see/use online information from many different countries just by a simple search in Google. This may be easier than looking through a lot of books in a library however the information found online isn't always the correct information.
Using the internet as a main source for research gives many advantages such as being able to search for information quickly and free. Being able to copy and paste the exact information you need instead of writing, saving a lot more time. The internet is fast, flexible and does have an advantage at being able to look at up-to date new.  You can almost use the internet anywhere due to how popular it is which makes it a lot more flexible and a better convince for example, you can use the internet at home, work or even in a modern library. What you can find on the internet is outstanding. However since there is so many websites it can be quite difficult and stressful to find the correct website needed which can also be quite time wasting. The main disadvantage of using the internet as research is that some of the information on some websites can be misleading. For example in a media industry they might want to find out what a demographic is or which demographic applies for the target audience. To find this information they could search online their definition but then come across a website such as Wikipedia which can have misleading information due to the fact that day to day people can generally edit the information and  create fake fact within the information. This is a disadvantage because it will lead to dishonest research and will result in having incorrect information. So although the internet may be a easy, flexible way to find research it can still be difficult to find a website with the correct information.

Links:

In summery Secondary research have many benefits such as being easier and faster than creating and collecting your own research e.g survey's. Its also much more flexible and can be more of a convince to use. For example if your using the internet for online research, you can usual do it in a lot of places making it more of a convince for your schedule. However the disadvantages include websites that include incorrect information which can lead to incorrect/false information and not being able to find the exact website you need. For example there is thousands of results when doing a simple search on google. This might result in wasting time to find the exact information needed. Making it frustrating to research. 

 Do another example

Quantitative research

Quantitative research is analyzing your primary or secondary research into statistics such as charts, tables and diagram. It is used  to see your research in a numerical point of view instead of using words for example if a media industry wanted to see which channel is the most popular they will be able to do a question-air which is a primary research method but then analyse it into a chart. 
This allows the media industry to see the difference between each channel, making it easier to understand which is the most important and vise versa. Here are some of the most popular ways to do quantitative research;

 Bar Chart
Quantitative research is done by collecting a large sum of research then analyzing the results into a chart. This can be done in different ways but the easiest and fastest way is analysing an survey or a questionnaire. For example in my survey I did a multiple choice for my first question. A multiple choice allows the participant to only pick one answer from the list provided. This is easier to analyse the results because their isn't to many different answers analyse and graph. 
To analyse the results you have to analyse each participants answer and see how many are the same answer. For example in question one in my survey there is only 3 answers and although I only had eight people answer my survey it still allowed me to see which is the most popular answer. As you can see in the picture on the right, Participant number 8 choose the answer banana however after looking through all of the 8 participants I found out that there was only 2 for banana.
 After looking through every survey you can then create the chart which shows your research. However on most software /websites which you can create online surveys will give you the option to see your analysed results instead of doing it your self although if the survey is on paper then it isn't done automatically. 

A Bar chart can be used in a media industry to see what their main audience is interested in. For example if the media industry wanted to see how many people strongly agreed with special items in a game then to collect this research an question air can be analysed in a Bar chat. This is beneficial because it summarize large research into a small and easy to understand bar chat which shows each data individually and is mainly used in the media. However some disadvantages is that a bar chart doesn't always show an informative amount of writing which may result in needing additional explanation. 

 Line graph
A Line is another popular method to produce data in a graph format. Bar charts and line charts are quite similar however line charts are usually used to see how something is changing over time. For example on this line graph on the right, it is showing how much social media has increased within 7 years. Its easy to tell how much it increased and when e.g the main year Facebook became popular was in 2008 and google+ was in 2011.
 This is used in the media industry because line graphs show specific values of data making it easier to read than a table etc because of how clear a pattern in a line chart is. This means that you can easily see when a line increases and when it decreases making it faster to predict what is going to happen in the results. However it can only be used to show what happens over time. For example if the media industry wanted to see the popularity of a channel over a certain amount of time then they will have to do/collect surveys over a certain amount of time asking the same question. Which will the be analysed and put into a line graph with the largest amount listed first.  

 Pie chart
A pie chart displays the information, research/ Data in a circle format which is cut into different slices. Making the bigger data a bigger slice.  For example In my survey I asked a question asking 'what is your age' and the picture to the right is the analysed results formatted into a pie chart. As you can see the 'slices' in the chart are all different sizes for example the '35 to 44' section is smaller than the '13 to 17' section. However you can easily see that the biggest slice is the '18 to 24' section. This means that the 18 to 24 was a more popular answer than the previous two making it a much more bigger slice. You can easily see the difference between each pie section this is an advantage because it allows the researcher to see the most popular participant answer almost instantly. Creating pie charts can be done in different software such as Microsoft excel, Microsoft word and is even available to create pie charts online easily and low/No cost. Advantages of using a pie chart to represent the data is that a pie chart is easily customization for example you can easily personalize a pie chart so each slice will have a different color, text size etc. This will make it more eye catching and make it more easier to see the different slices if the pie chart has many different sections.

Another advantage I like about pie charts is that it can show each slice percentage this is effective because it will allow the researcher to see the exact amount of participants answering the various questions in a percentage. For example if a pie chart doesn't have an percentage next to each slice it will mean that they will either have to calculate the separate percentages of the slices or will either have to guess the amount e.g if one section takes up half the circle it means that the percentage of the slice is 50%. 

 However even though a pie chart can give information such as a percentages it doesn't always have enough information presented. This is a disadvantage because it means that a pie chart might be to simple to represent a large amount of data which will limit the use of a pie chart. For example it is always better to use simple answers such as tick box answers or a one word sentence for a pie chart because the data isn't to complex to use. 
A Pie chart can be used in a media industry when trying to analyse simple questions from a survey/question air. this will be beneficial because it will allow them to see the results Fast and easy. I personally think that a pie chart is a lot more effective than a bar chart because it presents the data in a more Professional way and is easy to see the results in a glance rather than comparing each bar etc.  


Links

Qualitative research

Qualitative research does not rely on numbers/numerical data like quantitative research does. Qualitative research is used to have much more descriptive data instead of having graphs/Bar charts. For example if you do a survey, qualitative research wants to get as much information as possible from the participant. It doesn't just want to find out the participants answer it finds out why they answered it the way they did. 

 This results in having a more understanding of their personal opinions and emotions about the Questions. However to get the best qualitative research its much more better to use different methods where you can see the participants body language and emotions towards the questions. For example in a media industry they might do face to face Interviews or Focus groups so the researcher can observe their behavior towards the questions e.g if they feel more enthusiastic towards a different idea it is easy for the researcher to see Or if the participant don't look keen on a suggested idea the researcher will be able to find out why they aren't sure about the idea resulting in a much better descriptive data. 

Here are some of the different popular ways Qualitative research can be collected;

 Focus groups
A Focus group is instead of doing individual interviews, several people are interviewed at once. Focus groups is aimed to create a  discussion rather than several individual responsive this is because it wont produce any bias answers and will make it easier to get much more detailed answers and be able to see the groups feelings and opinions. 
The people involved in  the focus group should have something in common with the research even though it is important to have a different range of people involved. It is also important to try and encourage people from your target audience to get involved in the focus group e.g take age, gender and demographic under consideration when choosing participants. For example if the media industry is looking on how to improve a certain program then they would want to have participants who know what the program is otherwise some of the participants opinions may not be necessary due to the lack of knowledge about the program. 

 A benefit of doing a focus groups is that it will give in depth feed back for example it might help generate ideas or even solve problems. Its also important that the researcher is able to analyse as well as being able to listen, observe and have a great group skills otherwise the participants might get confused and bored which might effect their opinions/Body language and make it hard to control or manage the focus group.  Another advantage is that the focus groups usually have around 6 to 10 people involved this is a benefit because it will save a money and time compared to a individual interview however because so many people are participating it might be hard for some individuals to interact and get their opinion across because it might lead to some disagreement throughout the focus group and feel more intimidated or to much under pressure than they would in a individual interview. Although a small group in a focus group will limit the amount of information that can be collected. 

 Individual Interviews
An Individual interview is where the researcher will ask one participate several questions. There are different types of interviews for example their is unstructured which is where the researcher is basically emphasizing the questions and has very little structure in the questions for interview. This might be result in different questions in different interviews however this will make the interview more in depth and can ask questions based on the participants answers, making it easier for the research to go more in depth into a certain topic which will create more detailed information and gives a better advantage to have direct conversation and gives them the opportunity to see how their emotions/Opinions react to different questions. The next type is a semi structured interview. This is similar to a unstructured interview except that a semi structured interview has a more focused topic. For example instead of talking about several topics an structured interview has open ended questions mostly about a certain topic although some questions might result in the participant only having a limited answer towards a question e.g "Do you think a flying feature in this game would be good or bad?" However the interviewer will be able to ask why they think it and then ask how they could improve the feature etc.  

 The participant might feel more prompt to give a more detailed/Direct answer than they would do in a focus group because people do tend to feel more comfortable when being asked in person  which will give better feed back and make it easier for the researcher to have opportunity to give back a question that follows up a previous answer. However some participants might prefer being in a group and find interviews more nerves racking and more intimidating. So its important to make sure your participant is comfortable with the interview and the question before asking them otherwise a nervous participant might lead to a rushed answer.


Links
What is qualitative research: http://www.snapsurveys.com/blog/what-is-the-difference-between-qualitative-research-and-quantitative-research/
Qualitative research Image: http://www.dedoose.com/blog/
Qualitative Research example's: http://libweb.surrey.ac.uk/library/skills/Introduction%20to%20Research%20and%20Managing%20Information%20Leicester/page_56.htm
Focus group Image: https://www.nhh.org.uk/focus-groups
Individual Interview Image: http://www.mbadataguru.com/blog/mba-interview-guides/