2. Why is it important to gain audience feedback on a production?
Future references - constructive criticism for own learning or future careers
To discover what elements other people view as particular strengths (own confidence and
satisfaction) and areas that need improving (to give us knowledge of what we would do next time
to succeed further)
Helps considerably with own evaluation
Aims and Objectives:
To gain other people’s opinions of our product (media students – informed and knowledgeable
about subject so feedback was useful, constructive, valuable, reliable)
To gather specific ideas of how we could have improved our piece and give me confidence with the
strengths and constructive criticism with the weaknesses
Methods:
Questionnaire: I wrote a series of questions for each ancillary tasks – open and closed questions to
provoke a variety of different responses
- Open – “what is your favourite part of our documentary?”
Evaluation of method: Open questions give detailed and answers and chance for focus group to
express opinions but are more difficult to analyse, interpret and compare (also difficult to
categorise/put into graphs) but definitely more useful for gaining views on specific strengths and
weaknesses
- Closed – “On a scale of 1 to 10, how much did the double-page spread appeal to you?”
Evaluation of method: Closed questions give specific results that are not detailed and therefore
easy to analyse, interpret and compare
3.
4.
5.
6. Was the music appropriate?
3 members in our focus group felt the music was not appropriate for
the radio trail – on one questionnaire was the comment “bit
dull”, telling us that we could have done with creating a track which
was more upbeat. However, the remaining 12 felt the music was
appropriate, so overall we are pleased with the music we created. If
done again, we would have added engagement by changing the music
slightly and adding more variation of sound.
Was it informative enough?
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
Yes
No
No
Yes
0
5
10
15
Comments on the sound levels?
To enable me to apply the responses from this question to a
graph, I tallied the amount of times each category was said, then
calculated the percentage of each. Over 50% of our focus group
thought the sound levels were good, yet 1 person felt the sound
was poor – which is an anomaly due to the exceptional result. I
feel the sound levels were good, so am pleased with these results.
On this question, we gained 100% positive feedback, as each of
the 15 people we asked felt that our radio trail revealed enough
information about our documentary. Whereas some commented
that our radio trail “gave a clear idea of what the documentary
was about” and was “very informative”, others argued that it
was perhaps too informative. These results are great to see – if I
were to create another radio trail, I would include more extracts
from our documentary rather than the majority voice over to
remove some of this detail and add engagement.
Good
Satisfactory
Average
Poor
7.
8. On a scale of 1-10, how much did you enjoy our documentary?
To calculate the Mean, Median and Mode of the responses
from this question, I created a table in Microsoft Excel and
recorded the scores and the frequency of each. For the
Mean, I calculated the Score x Frequency and divided the
total by the number of people (15), giving a result of 8. To
calculate the Median, I found where the half way mark of
the total fell (8). The most common (Mode) was 7 and 9, so
an average of 8, and the range is 3.
I was very pleased with these findings, as no one scored the
enjoyment of our documentary less than 7 and our highest
score was a perfect 10. Each measure of central tendency
was 8, which is a very high score, giving me confidence that
our focus group felt our documentary was a high standard.
How would you describe
the overall aesthetics?
Excellent
Very Good
Good
Satisfactory
Poor
Whilst recording the results of the questionnaire I was very pleased to
find that the answers for this question were particularly positive, with
60% of our focus group saying ‘Very Good’ and 33% saying ‘Good’. The
remaining person thought the aesthetics were ‘Excellent’, which was
excellent to see because the visuals were the main focus and I had
worked hard to manipulate them in order to engage the audience.
I had made the question more specific by creating these categories
myself, so people could choose which of the group their view fell into.
This proved very efficient as it meant answers were less detailed so
recording the responses and transferring them into a pie chart was a
quick and easy process.
9. How would you describe the music?
Excellent
Very Good
Good
Satisfactory
Poor
I applied the same categories to this question to gain a more specific
response and make the questionnaire easier and less time consuming
for our focus group, encouraging them to answer more truthfully
rather than feeling the need to rush and choose any random answer.
This question also provoked a particularly positive response. Although
1 person thought the music was ‘Poor’, this result was an anomaly.
20% of our focus group chose ‘Excellent’ as an answer for this
question, 60% chose ‘Very Good’ and 13 % chose ‘Good’ – results I am
especially pleased with, as I was worried that the music was not up to
the standard I would have liked due the lack of time we left to create
it. Therefore, the findings surprised me, but I am exceptionally happy
with the responses.
The responses for this question varied, so I created 6 categories to
tally the answers into, which worked well as each answer fit into one
of the categories. Surprisingly, the modal answer was ‘None’, as 5
people couldn’t find any specific improvements they would have
made. This could have been due to rush since it was the last
question, but nonetheless I was very pleased with this result.
I was also surprised to find that one response suggested that
we should have included a wider range of shots, since all the
results from the question ‘How would you describe the
overall aesthetics?’ were above average. Even so, I
understand that we could have used a wider variation of the
types of shots (close ups, medium shots, long shots) and
angles (high angle, low angle) so I will take this on board.
Other suggested improvements include: quality of voice
over, more interviews/vox pops, sound levels and music.
How do you think it could
have been improved?
None
Quality of Voice Over
More Interviews/Vox Pops
Wider Variation of Shots
Sound Levels
Music
10. What issues did you face during audience feedback?
-
-
People may not have been truthful due to wanting to conform to the mainstream/most popular view.
Some of the answers to the open questions seemed rushed – not as much detail as desired
Participants of self-report methods like interviews or questionnaires, have the ability to answer in a
certain way to manipulate results (either negatively – to spite the researcher; or positively – to improve
results)
Difficult to record, analyse and compare qualitative data from open questions
How did you manage to overcome these issues?
The members of our focus group were people from our media class, who had completed the same tasks, so
knew what the aim of our research was - therefore, they may have chosen to answer in a certain way
rather than expressing their own true opinions. We could not have avoided this, so, to make answers more
specific and encourage our focus group to answer truthfully, I created a mixture of open and closed
questions, meaning the participants could go into detail if they wished, but also didn’t have spend a lot of
time filling the questionnaire out.
I overcame the issue with difficulty to record, analyse and compare qualitative data from open questions
by conducting content analysis – categorising the responses and tallying how many answers fell into each
group
How would you alter or improve the methods you used to gather audience
feedback?
A focus group, consisting of media students, watched our documentary and ancillary tasks, and filled out a
questionnaire we had made, commenting on elements based on the audio, visual and technical coding.
I would have liked to create a focus group that included a range of people, some media students, and
some who do not know a lot about the subject, in order to provoke a wider range of responses.
If I had had more time, I would have interviewed individuals and recorded their response visually in order
to avoid some of the issues that aroused during the questionnaire (e.g. people would be more likely to be
truthful in an interview due to being under more pressure).
