2. To research out target audience, the first thing we needed to do was
find out their opinions on documentaries and their content. However,
to take advantage of the questionnaire I, having designed the
questionnaire, also placed some questions that were relevant to the
topic we had decided to focus on. I mainly tried to keep them very
general so that non-media or film students would be able to answer
them.
In the following slides, the results from the online service ‘Survey Monkey’ have
been used to provide a more interesting portrayal of the results, as well as
exhibiting the use of an online technology, rather than a common every day
software such as excel. The graphs shown are those of questions where this feature
is available, otherwise only the results are shown on the slide.
I’d advise viewing in full screen to be able to properly read the results.
Introduction
13. Significant Results
In terms of the most relevant and impactful results, questions 6 and onward were used to gauge the audience's
views on aspects of the proposed documentary and were therefore the most important and crucial answers to our
audience research.
Q6 - Most of the audience told us that they prefer investigative documentaries, which we had already selected to
be one of the purposes of our documentary anyway as it fits the topic well.
Q7 – Our audience gave us many ideas about what to do in terms of the content for the documentary such as
codes and conventions, mainly pointed out as statistics and facts or recreations, as well as topical ideas such as
'day in the life’, causes of the technology age gap and whether it matters, search histories/ what they reveal
about a person, impact of technology on different age groups etc... (possibly the most interesting and useful).
Q8 - 66% of audience likes to both see and hear presenter whereas the other 22% like to hear and 11% see
Q9 - 66% of the audience prefers to see a lot of public participation vs 33% not
Q10 - 61% of audience like open ending, whereas 39% prefer closed.
14. Reflection on Significant Results
When assessing the results of question 6, it is a perfectly reasonable stance that we should keep the proposed
purpose of an investigative documentary as it fits the topic of a technology age gap well. Of course we will still
add additional purposes such as entertainment to still make the documentary interesting in diverse ways for the
audience.
In terms of question 7 there are many ideas that have been put forward by the audience that could be considered
useful. Before consultation with the rest of the group, I personally think that asking whether the age gap
matters/ how big it is, as well as the search history idea are both quite feasible and I will be putting them
forward as ideas that could be seen in the final product.
The results of questions 8, 9 and 10 are all percentages and are therefore quite simple to assimilate into our
discussions. Questions 8 and 9 particularly have answers from the audience which have a 2:1 majority and are
therefore the answers most likely to be taken in to consideration. In this case, the majority of the audience like
to see and hear the presenter which already fits in with our proposed participatory or performative mode target
for the documentary. Most of the audience like to see a prominent appearance of the public, vs a less prominent
one. Although this may be more difficult to do, given the topic we are covering this may be beneficial when trying
to discover the truth behind a technology age gap.
