Brontes Audience research

1. Audience Research
Questionnaire
Bronte Sullivan

2. Audience Research Questions
1. Are you a teacher, student or parent?
2. What TV channels do you usually watch?
3. Do you watch documentaries in your own time?
4. If so can you give some examples
5. If you watch documentaries what is normally the purpose eg. To
entertain or inform?
6. Do you find it interesting to watch documentaries that follow an
individual/individuals around and see how they live their life eg.
Benefits Street, My big fat gypsy wedding, The elephant man
7. Do you like it when voiceovers are used in documentaries? Do you
think they add anything?
8. What do you like to see in documentaries eg. Facts, interviews.
9. Would you be interested in watching a documentary that sees if
educational institutions like the Solihull Sixth Form College truly
meet the needs of the physically disabled?
10. Do you like documentaries where the film maker is a subject
within the documentary and interacts with the subject?

3. Sample Questionnaire Results

6. Results
1. Are you a teacher, Parent, Student?
As our documentary could be targeted towards students, teacher or parents we decided to ask
six people that came under all three categories so we could understand what the different
aged groups liked to watch and weather they preferred documentaries to inform or
entertain etc. We wanted to collect as much information about our potential target
audiences as possible so we would know who we should target out documentary to.
2. What channels do you usually watch?
Student Teacher Parent
4 1 1
Students
BBC 1
ITV
Channel 4
ITV 3
Comedy Central
E4

7. Teacher and Parent
Channel 4
BBC 1
BBC 2
BBC 4
ITV
From this question we discovered that Channel 4 is popular with the 16-18 age group as all of the
students we asked watched it. BBC and ITV were also popular channels but not as popular as channel
four. Students also watch channels like E4 and Comedy Central which are mainly for entertainment. In
contrast to this the teacher watched mainly BBC channels like BBC1 and BBC 4, these channels are
know for having more serious content compared to the ones that the students watch. The parent
liked channels such as BBC 1 and ITV which can be serious but also entertain with soap opera etc.
Overall the biggest difference was the students channels compared to the teacher which suggests
they would be interested in different types of documentary and that as a group we ay have to decide
to aim the documentary at one group not both.

8. 3. Do you watch documentaries in your own time?
Yes No
5 1
Nearly everybody that I asked watched some form of documentary in their own
time. The parent said that they didn't watch them regularly though just occasionally.
Y having nearly everyone say yes we can find out what types of documentary they
like to watch and what they find interesting and don't. We can also find out if there
is anything they particularly like to see when watching a documentary so we can
make are documentary more suited to the target audience.

9. By asking what type of documentaries they like to watch we can see that the students and parent
preferred entertaining documentaries rather than informative ones. Whereas the teacher preferred
more informative documentaries. This further suggests that we could not create a documentary that
appealed to both groups.
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
3.5
Students Parent Teacher
Made In Chelsea
My Big Fat Gypsy
Wedding
Reggie Snow in Russia
One born every
minute
Careers for disabilities
RSPCA
Undateables
Nature Documentary
3. If so can you give some examples?

10. 6. Do you find it interesting to watch documentaries that follow individuals around and see how
they live their lives?
Yes No
5 1
Nearly all of the people asked said that they enjoyed watching peoples lives and have the camera
follow the round or in a fly-on-the-wall style. From this I think that we made the right choice to
follow someone round and see how the deal with getting around the college with their disability. I
think that this style of documentary is very popular and the topic would interested a lot of people.
For this question we wanted to see if our potential target audiences prefer entertaining
documentaries, informative documentaries or both. Three of the of the students said entertaining
which was backed up by what documentaries they watched. The parent and another said both were
as equally important when watching a documentary. The teacher said inform which consists with the
rest of the information we have already discovered.
Purpose
Entertain
Inform
Both
4. If you watch documentaries what is
the purpose? Eg. To entertain or
inform?

11. 7. Do you like it when voiceovers are used in documentaries?
Yes No
4 2
The majority of the people asked do like voiceovers when watching a documentary.
Some people said that by having a voiceover it made the documentary more
interesting. The parent said that by having a voiceover it helped explain things to
the audience more precisely. However one student believed that voiceover were
annoying to listen to and preferred not to have them. I think for our documentary
we will have a voiceover so we can explain tings to the audience if we need to and
also create an interest for them.

12. 9. Would you be interested watching a documentary that sees if educational institutions like the
Solihull Sixth Form College truly meet the needs of the physically disabled?
Documentary Idea
Yes
No
Everyone who was asked thought that our documentary idea was interesting and
would want to find out more about the topic. This is the first time everyone asked has
been united with the same answer. From this our group can assume that we have a
good documentary idea.

13. 10. Do you like documentaries where the film maker is a subject within the documentary and
interacts with the main subject?
Yes No
4 2
Again the majority said yes, the parent said yes because they believe that the
film maker tends to ask interesting questions and finds it interesting to see
what their reactions are to the events that are happening. A couple of people
said no, but I think we will still be including the film maker within our
documentary.

14. Why We Did The Questionnaire
We decided to do the questionnaire to see what people who are our
target audience think about documentaries. We also wanted to see
if they watch them and find them interesting. We would want to
make our documentary appeal to its target audience which is
students (16-19) and teacher an maybe a few parents (35-50) and
make sure that they would be interested by the topic and the
content of it. By asking questions to see what they like and dislike we
can take this information and decide what elements we would want
in our documentary. Without the questionnaire we would have little
knowledge about what would make a good documentary for our
target audience.

16. Handing out audience research

17. Handing out audience research

18. Reflection

19. Focus Group