This document discusses different types of research methods that can be used, including qualitative vs. quantitative research, questionnaires, focus groups, interviews, and online research. It provides examples of each method and notes potential positive and negative aspects. Specifically, it recommends that for a new community center website and promotional video targeting local youth, the researcher could conduct an online questionnaire, focus groups, or a series of one-on-one interviews, noting advantages and disadvantages of each approach.

1. BIG PICTURE
Exam preparation – Research
KEYWORDS
Quantitative / Qualitative /
Questionnaires / Online/
Focus Groups
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Be able to understand and to
evaluate different forms of
research
SUCCESS CRITERIA
Answers to exam questions
Take your seat. Bag under your desk.
Have your equipment and planner out.
Topic –
What different kinds of research can you do?
Think of a positive and negative about each form of research you come
up with.

2. TYPES OF
RESEARCH
Unit 2- Pre Production

3. Types of Research
■ There are different ways of thinking about different types of research – this short
presentation will take you through some of them
■ In the Unit 2 exam you may be asked about
– Why a particular type of research would be useful
– Why you should carry out different types of research
– What the advantages and disadvantages of different types of research might be
– What you might hope to learn from a particular type of research

4. Qualitative –v- Quantitative
■ This is one way of thinking about how you can find different information
■ Qualitative research produces data about the ‘quality’ of your focus.
– How good do people think your film is?
– How much do people think your poster will make them go and see the show?
– How much did people enjoy the role of this character in theTV show?
– How enjoyable did people find the level in your game?
It produces data about people’s opinions

5. Qualitative –v- Quantitative
■ Quantitative research produces data about real-world numbers.
– How many tickets did you sell for the play?
– What were the opening weekend box office numbers for the film?
– How many copies of the paper are sold on average every day of the week?
– How many people have live-streamed the footage, and how many have used
YouTube to watch again later?
– How many players are online playing your game and what is the busiest time of day
for people to be playing?
It produces data about real numbers from what has actually happened.

6. Qualitative/Quantitative
■ Both are useful
■ Quantitative data is easy to measure, easy to analyse, and easy to produce useful statistics and
graphs about. It tells you about what your audiences are doing.
■ Qualitative data can be harder to analyse but it can help to explain the quantitative data – it tells you
why your audience are doing what they are doing.
■ You can still create statistics out of qualitative data
– You can ask your audience to rate things on a scale of 1 to 5 (or whatever, a scale of x to y)
– You can ask them to rate from ‘Definitely / Probably / Maybe / Probably not / Definitely not’ and
then ‘score’ those answers 5/4/3/2/1 to create statistics
– There is software that will analyse the language people use in written answers (or oral answers in a
recorded discussion) to research questions and produce statistics based on that analysis

7. What research are you doing?
■ As well as dividing into Qualitative and Quantitative you can also divide up your
research by how you are finding things out. This might include
– Questionnaires
– Focus groups
– Individual interviews
– Online research

8. Questionnaires
■ Quick to design and easy to send out to a large audience
■ Easy to collect, measure and analyse the responses
■ BUT
– Not able to get ‘behind’ the answers and gain additional information
– Low rater of return
– Can be difficult to focus on the ‘right’ kind of audience

9. Focus Groups
■ Able to obtain extra information from the group interaction
■ Able to follow up specifics to suit your purposes
■ A large sample size for qualitative data collection
■ BUT
– Not as easy to measure or analyse
– Not as much control as for an interview

10. Interviews
■ Possible to gain in depth responses from people
■ Able to focus on participants who are relevant to your research
■ BUT
– Not as easy to measure or analyse
– You can ‘over-guide’ your research to work on getting what you want

11. Online research
■ Very easy (and very cheap) to distribute to and collect from a wide audience
■ Good at collecting ‘number’ responses to qualitative questions (on a scale of 1-5 when
were 1 is ‘definitely not’ and 5 is ‘definitely’…)
■ BUT
– Not easy to focus on your intended audience
– You can’t be sure that respondents are taking it seriously

12. Context and Question
■ You are producing a website and a short promotional video for a new community
centre
■ The intended users of the centre are local people aged 14-21
■ The centre has some sports facilities (a sports hall and a gym), some art and media
studio space and a screening room, a café and general meeting areas
■ What research will you do about your website and your short promotional video?
■ What would the positive and negative points be about using…
– An online questionnaire
– A focus group
– A series of one-on-one interviews (in person or on the phone)