Survey analysis for media portfolio

1. An analysis of the responses to a survey
SurveyAnalysis

2. In my survey, I asked for the participant’s gender, as the gender of the audience is essential for designing the content of the magazine. For
example, if more people that answered the survey were male, the content of the magazine should be shaped towards males. Additionally, in this
context, the conclusion of the participants’ gender may give reason for other questions, and, henceforth, give reason for designing specific
aspects of the magazine towards specific genders.
In this case, more participants of the survey were female as evident by the pie chart- it shows a two-third majority of females in comparison to
males. This shows that there were more females willing to participate in the survey than males, suggesting that females are perhaps more active
members of society. A parallel could be drawn from the active nature of the female participants in the survey to the active nature of females in
buying music magazines, and so I can conclude how the magazine should be shaped towards the appeal of females who appear to be the more
feasible target audience. However, this does not necessarily mean that the magazine will have to be aesthetically female, nor male, nor does it
suggest the actual content of the magazine has to be specifically gender exclusive, yet elements of the magazine can be tailored towards specific
genders to appeal more to the target audience.
From the conclusion of females being the more active participants in the survey, other responses to questions can be perceived to be as a result
of the gender of the participant.

3. In this question, I asked for the age of my participants. This is essential information to know as it can help to form the target
audience of my magazine. The most common age bracket, as you can see from the bar chart, was 11-20 year olds. This does not
necessarily mean that this age range has to be the target audience of my magazine, but it does make other answers relevant, in
the sense that their age may determine the answers that they give and vice versa. Therefore, I can conclude that the majority of
people that took my survey were in the age bracket of 11-20 year olds, and due to the fact that I am using other responses to
make my magazine, it is necessary to include this age range as a possible target audience of my magazine as the what they saw
they want in other answers may only relevant to this age range. However, this does not say that an older age range should not be
considered in my target audience as my genre may be relevant to them, and a minority did take the survey, however, on the
whole, the magazine should be aimed towards the 11-20 year old age range.

4. In this question, I asked for a general idea as to which music genres my audience listened to. These music genres were made up
of the most popular and conventional genres I could think of, with minimal sub-genres to ensure that simply a broad sense of
genre was achieved. As you can see from the bar chart, the three most popular genres were rock, alternative and rap, in that
order. As rock and alternative are generally similar genres, and they came first and second respectively, it can be said how rock, in
a general sense, could be an appropriate genre for the magazine. This is simply based on user response, and does not determine
the final genre of my magazine, however the fact that the top two genres picked by participants was similar suggests that
perhaps, down to other factors such as age, this genre is the most popular with audience, and consequently it should be taken
into account to be the genre of my magazine to satisfy the audience. However, it is clear from the high amounts of each option
picked that the audience have quite an eclectic music taste, which is great for me to know as I can give reference to other genres
than my final determined one in the magazine to add diversity.

5. In this question, I asked how many music magazines are read by the participants in a typical month, as this gives a general idea as
to the frequency of my publication, and the price, in an indirect sense, as price may be a determining factor on how many
magazines the audience purchase in a month (therefore revealing disposable income and furthermore the demographic group of
the audience). From the pie chart, it can be seen that the most popular option was actually that they never read music
magazines, which can not be regarded as the magazine still has to be made, however it is rather useful as it highlights that the
audience may not have a great deal of disposable income to spend on music magazines, or perhaps they are not interested in
them, or perhaps there has never been a magazine which successfully satisfies their taste- all of which are incentives to produce
a suiting music magazine. However, we can use the second most popular option which was twice a month, and so we can
determine from this that the release should be fortnightly, as this fits to how many magazines the audience buy on average every
month.

6. Here, I asked which music magazines the audience were most likely to read, from a series of options- the intention of this was to
find out which magazine I should follow the conventions of the most, or which magazine I should use the target audience as a
basis for my own. As you can see from the chart, NME magazine came out on top, which is now a free publication. From this, I do
not necessarily need to base my magazine on the style or genre of NME (it has quite immature features and it is focussed on
more popular music than I intend to focus on)- however, I can use the fact that NME essentially has a young target audience to
base my target audience as adolescents. They like NME, which is a magazine tailored towards the youth, and so they are more
likely to enjoy my magazine if I tailor some aspects of it towards the youth target audience. Interestingly, Metal Hammer and
Prog Rock, two of Team Rock’s publications, did not feature, which suggests either their popularity or the fact I should not follow
conventions of those magazines.

7. Here, I asked the participant the ways in which they listen to music, as I proposed that this would give me a greater insight into
the type of interest the audience have in music, and the ways I can influence them to listen to specific artists in my own
magazine. As you can see from the chart, the most popular response was streaming services, which suggests fundamentally that
the audience go for convenience and speed over quality- this may be dependent on the age bracket of the participant and their
consequential relationship with technology, and furthermore the access to streaming services that the technology brings. From
this, I can use the idea of streaming services being so popular to form references in my magazine that will be relevant to the
audience and that will hopefully diversify their listening. It is interesting, however, that vinyl is also a popular platform (60% of
participants listen to music on vinyl) and so this can be used to form references in articles, or have relevant advertisements, to
the platforms that the audience listen to music on.

8. The next question of my survey was asking ‘how much would you normally spend on magazines in a typical month?’. I decided to ask this
question as I thought it to be useful to see how much participants would pay for a music magazine- as if I know how much they spend each
month on magazines, I can determine how many magazines they would buy- and, also, to use this information to determine the frequency of my
magazine.
From the pie chart representation of the results, it is evident that the majority of participants (46.67%) spend ‘£0.01-£5’ on magazines in a
typical month. Other prominent answers were in the range of ‘£5.01-£10’ (20%) and, in the contrary case, 26.67% of participants do not spend
money on magazines in a typical month. This shows that, if we use the typical price of a single magazine ranging from ‘£0.01-£5’, most
participants buy one magazine in a typical month. In order to find the average price that a participant would pay for a magazine, I put the data
from the survey into a frequency table. I calculated that the mean price that a participant would pay for a magazine is £3.50, which is useful for
the pricing of my magazine as I now know that I should price my magazine at an average of £3.50.
This information links prominently to the question ‘From the following magazines, which would you read?’ as the most popular answer was
‘NME’ with 60% of participants stating that they would read NME. To put this into context, NME became a free magazine from September 2015 to
make ‘the last throw of the dice’, as stated by ‘theguardian.com’, and so there is a strong correlation between the high number of participants
that would read NME and the high number of people who would either pay nothing or very little for a magazine.

9. Price Frequency Midpoint F x M
£0 4 0 0
£0.01-£5 7 2.495 17.465
£5.01- £10 3 7.505 22.515
£10.01-£15 1 12.505 12.505
£15.01-£20 0 17.505 0
£20.01+ 0 0 0
Total 15 52.485
52.485/15 =
£3.50

10. Here, I asked for a general idea of what content should be included in my magazine, so that I knew what should make up the
magazine as a whole. These were conventional and typical magazine features that audiences would be familiar with and so they
could easily determine what they preferred. As presented in the chart that I generated, you can see that the three most popular
choices of content in a magazine were interviews, reviews and features on music of the past. From this, I can decide particularly
on aspects of the magazine such as an interview being included in my double page spread, reviews being referred to in my
contents page an artists or the past being referenced on my front cover. It is not necessary to include all of these popular desired
features, however, as the participants have highlighted that these features are there most liked about music magazines, it makes
sense to include them- it suggests that the audience like more in depth, textual features that are at length, and, also from the
chart, it is suggested that audience do not particularly warm to reader’s letters, and so it is noted that they will most likely not
make a feature in my magazine as they are not desirable.

11. This question was fundamental to finding out the length of what the magazine should be- if I could find out amount of time the
participant spends reading a music magazine, I could determine how much disposable time they have and therefore how long
they would maintain interest in the magazine in a continuous read. The results concluded that the most predominant time
spent reading magazines was 20-39 minutes, henceforth showing that the magazine is read in short bursts or that it is read
briefly and passed on to a friend. From this, I can determine how my magazine must be engaging to keep the reader active and
engaged for ideally more than 40 minutes, and so I can use this result to determine stylistic features of my magazine that would
draw my reader in, such as engaging articles, buzz words, artists that are relevant to the genre of mise-en-scene features of
images that are relevant to the genre of my magazine.

12. In this question, I asked the participants how long they spend listening to music each day. The responses to this would create an
idea of not only how enthusiastic my audience is, but also how much disposable time the audience have when it comes to music.
Henceforth, I can use this to determine the demographics of my audience and base this to determine how long my magazine
would be in length. From the results you can see, the largest response to the question was ‘3 hours +’, which suggests one of two
things about the audience; either they have a lot of disposable time to dedicate to music, or they listen to music on the go. From
this, with either outcome, I can alter the length of my magazine to be greater in length generally, and I can use the fact that my
audience listen to music on the go or while doing other things to advertise and incorporate relevant technology and streaming
services into my magazine. The extensive listening time fundamentally shows the dedication my audience has to music, and the
way that it is such a profound part of their life.