The Nature and Purposes of Research in the Creative Media Industries

Research is a difficult but altogether far too necessary evil that is core to almost all creative media productions, no matter how big or small. As such, it's important to understand the different forms that research can come in so that one can be better prepared when, inevitably, a project requires research.

Normally, the first kind of research to be undertaken is 'secondary' research. This may seem like a misnomer, but it means garnering information from existing sources; such as websites, books, government statistics, etc. so it would stand to reason that this is normally the first way people get information. A good example of such research would be if someone wanted to know about, say, the American Civil War, they could look up Wikipedia and follow sources from there and just generally read about the subject. It's secondary because this person isn't actually asking people from the Civil War about it, instead reading what other people have found out.

I, personally, used websites about synesthesia like Neuroscience for Kids and the University of Sussex's research page on synesthesia.

After gathering some preliminary information on your given subject, it's not unheard of to need something a little more specific. Enter 'primary research' which, as the name suggests, is information that you gather yourself, or from 'primary' sources. This can come in many forms, like interviews, questionnaires, experiments, focus groups, etc. I myself made a survey using Google Forms. Given our budget and time-frame, surveys were the most practical because they're quick and cheap, and we could get a lot of different results in a small amount of time. For example, something I learned from my survey was that, according to my results, more people had heard of synesthesia than not, which was a little surprising.

If we had a larger budget and some more time, it would have been quite good to have a focus group, or a test screening after production. A good example of this is Disney's The Emperor's New Groove, which started out as a more serious tale akin to the Lion King called Kingdom of the Sun. However, during production there were numerous test screenings to various focus groups, and the film as it was just did not resonate with the audiences. So, Disney changed almost everything about the film and it became the classic it is today.

This is a prime example of audience research. However, there is also market research that has to be done. Market research is similar to audience research but different in the sense that instead of looking at audience opinions and attitudes, one is scoping out the current market to see if there is competition. Sure, there might be audience demand for a hard sci-fi movie about a bunch of people stranded on a spaceship and audience research would have no problem with that, but then market research would reveal that Sunshine is already a thing, and that the demand is probably sufficiently fulfilled. I did look at finding some existing documentaries on synesthesia for my project, and did indeed find some similar films. If I were producing for TV, I might have ditched the idea but as it turns out these documentaries aren't very well-known, so the demand for a documentary about synesthesia would go on unfulfilled regardless of existing media.

Within primary and secondary research there is different types of data that can be gained, the first of which being 'quantitative'. Coming from the word 'quantity', this is about numerical data and things that can be plotted on a line, for instance money or amounts of people. For instance, if someone wanted to know how many people go out to buy ice cream on a hot day, they could sit by an ice cream truck and record how many people buy ice cream from there. It's quantitative because they're counting a number and not the type of something.

In my research the main quantitative data I was looking for was numbers of people who had synesthesia, which ended up being very vague due to the nature of the condition.

The opposite of quantitative data is 'qualitative'. From the word 'quality', this pertains to data that cannot be assigned a numerical value, such as colour, or shape. For example, say someone wanted to study how people react when left in an empty room. They would probably just sit someone in an empty room and observe what they do. A number can't really be applied to these, so the data is qualitative.

For my topic especially, qualitative data was rather important, as I needed to know things like what people thought the word meant, whether they know anyone who has it or not, and whether it was something they wanted to hear more about or not.

An easy way of finding some information ripe for secondary picking is data gathering agencies, like BARB or RJAR. These agencies' main purpose is to gather data about audiences for other companies and people to use and benefit from. BARB (British Audience Research Board) in particular analyses TV ratings for hundreds of channels, and lists them on their website in millions of viewers per show. That would be helpful for me if I were trying to put my documentary on TV because it gave me an idea of what kind of documentaries people watch and when, giving a sort of blueprint of the most opportune time to air.

For instance, a documentary like One Born Every Minute on Channel 4 wouldn't do so well before watershed even though its content is discreet enough to qualify for being shown before then. However, it might not know that if it weren't for current viewing figures for other programmes of a similar ilk.

So why is this information so sought after? Well, in an industry such as this one it is immensely important to know your audience; who likes what and at what age, depending on where they live etc. Nearly everything that goes on TV is extensively researched beforehand to see if it is actually viable to produce, and then to see when it would be most appropriate to air since every single venture is crazy risky. It's not just audience data either, it's also important to know whether there is any direct competition in the specific space one is after (in my case another documentary about synesthesia) and how audiences are responding to said competition. My audience research was in the form of the survey. I asked questions pertaining to their current attitude towards synesthesia (if they had one to start with), and how aware they were of the subject.

After the audience has been researched sufficiently, one must then tackle the production research. This is all about how viable the actual plans for production are, whether enough funds can be secured to go ahead with production, whether there is enough equipment about to make the production etc. There wasn't really much of this needed for my documentary, as equipment, funds, etc are all pre-decided. However, I did need to research locations in order to find some that were most sensible for each of the interviews in my documentary.

The reliability of a piece of research greatly increases if it's repeated. This is true across all research, and this is no exception, but it's important to note that conditions are important. Some problems with using questionnaires include distribution online; it's difficult to make sure you're getting results from a wide range of different types of people and I don't think I succeeded in this as a lot of people who answered were around the same age; so my results probably aren't very generalisable, and won't be representative of the wider community. There's also the issue in that, when online, people act as they would when shrouded with the veil of anonymity - they'll do whatever they want. Often this means that some people won't take the questionnaire seriously, and the answers may not be totally reliable. This happened in my questionnaire once or twice - I doubt someone actually thought synesthesia meant 'homosexual'. Answers may not be reliable if the questionnaire asks difficult questions, either - a question relating to someone's private habits might cause people to lie. This is known as 'social desirability bias'.

On the other hand, it's entirely possible that people will display demand characteristics through giving not the answers that they believe in, but the answers they think I'd want to hear. Again, this is very difficult, if not impossible to avoid; but it's much less likely to happen with strangers, which is why I submitted my questionnaire to an online forum. Some benefits to that include the fact that I got a lot more results than I would have otherwise, but it's not perfect since I got a more narrow selection of people answering. As such, my results don't necessarily represent the population as a whole, more just teenagers in western, English-speaking countries. If results can't be generalised, then they can't really have any worthwhile conclusions applied to them - I can't necessarily say that my target audience was interested in the concept if that was the case.

SOURCES

American Civil War - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War

Neuroscience for Kids - https://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/syne.html

University of Sussex page - http://www.sussex.ac.uk/synaesthesia/

Google Forms - http://www.google.com/google-d-s/createforms.html

Kingdom of the Sun - http://www.cartoonbrew.com/disney/the-sweatbox-the-documentary-disney-doesnt-want-you-to-see-59467.html

BARB - http://www.barb.co.uk/