Summary

To conclude, Primary, secondary, audience, production, market, quantitative and qualititative research all connect in a way. These 7 research types are important in the media industry and you can't use one without another when planning to produce or producing a product.

Primary research is used by a lot of media companies, this is when they find information independently using resources such as; Questionnaires, direct observations, focus groups and telephone interviews. Sometimes to gain some knowledge of the issue they use secondary research. To find secondary research you can look at someone elses primary research. For example; National Readership Survey. This would be their companies primary research, they have found out the age, gender and   etc... about who buys which newpaper. (For example 3420 people above the age 45 have bought The sun). This is also Audience research, because they have collected and analysed information about the target audience of certain newspapers. Media companies that want to produce a new newspaper could use this information for secondary research, when the media company was finding this information out they might have looked into other peoples primary research to get a brief idea. They would need to know what their target audience was and look into newpapers that their target audience have bought in the past. This is where the media company would have to start looking at market research, because they would be looking into other media companies work and trying to make their product better than others. Looking at different examples would help them with what information their target audience like to read. For example: news, gossip, whats on the TV, peoples stories, etc...  This company uses quantitative research, they have collected facts and information that has been counted. Qualititive research has also been used when the media company was finding this information out, because they might have used a questionnaire or a survey to find this information out. The questions they could have used are 'What newspaper do you like to buy/read?', but they would also have to ask questions which aren't open like 'Are you male or female?' and 'How old are you?'. They may also include other questions. Market research and production research is an important part of the pre-production process because they both give the producer knowledge of important aspects that need to be thought of whilst the product is in production.

Production research

Production research is the collection and analysis of information for the content and production of a media production. If the audience research goes as planned and the market analysis is favourable a media company may decide to go ahead to launch a new product into the market.
Production research is needed to provide content and gather material to allow the company to develop the new product and also to research the commerical viability of actually making the product. It's also needed to investigate the technology and personnel available and to check out suitable recording and production locations. Also throughly researcha and to plan production and post-production stages to make sure it all runs smoothly as possible.
Production research is essential when planning to develop a new game ideaTo perform production research the developer or producer will employ trained researchers to gather the suitable information for the area they are looking for e.g. financial or locations. Production research also includes advertising and where it might be placed to gain the best possible reaction from the audience. It will help to gain information on income and outgoing costs.

The advantages are that a wide audience will see the advertisements and it will increase public knowledge and likeness of the product. The disadvantages include that it is easy to over advertise where people will get bored of them.

Market research

Market research is the collection and analysis of information about the market within which a particular product will compete with other products for an audience. The media marketplace is very competitive. Media producers often find detailed market research into their target market. Sometimes they even commission other companies to undertake research on their behalf.
They are intrested in:

• What the target looks like,
• Who the other competitors in that market are,
• What their products are like.

They're very interested in the economic factors within the market and what potential revenue is available.
For exmaple:
If I was going to produce a magazine I would look into other magazines that have been produced by other companies and are the same type of magazine and have the same target audience(E.G. Teen girls/boys, pregnant women and etc..) I would try make a better magazine than the ones I have got research from.

The advantages of market research are that the researchers can improve the developer’s takings from the finished game and reduce the risk of the game not performing well in the market against the other competition. The disadvantages are that the sources may not be reliable sometimes not providing true information like the information website “Wikipedia,” which can be edited by anyone. If false information is taken from a website like this and then it is given to the client the finished product may not be a success.

Audience research

This is the collection and analysis of information about the target audience for a particular media product of the media industry. Knowing what your target audience is and what they like is important. It is about investigating the amount of people and the background of the audience for a particular media product. Also the audience members who are aware of a particular media product and service. What members of the target audience think about particular products and services and their patterns of behaviour and the potential use of the products also needs to be investigated. There are many different methods of finding out this research such as: Interviews, questionnaires, Surveys, Discussion groups. All of these methods have many advantages and disadvantages, such as When interviewing people individually they tend to tell the truth because they are on there own. Also you may get to know and understand the participating audience, but it may take too much time to interview a amount of different people in the audience with different backgrounds. The interviewer may make the interviewee uncomfortable and it may make them go shy and not say much. An advantage of doing questionnaires are that they can be distributed on a wide scale. Also they can involve both closed and open questions, but some of the audience may skip questions or even answers falsely. Surveys are a good way to find out information because they have high reliability and get views from a diverse audience, but not all the audience will reply. Discussion groups are also a extremely good and well used method in the media industry, because they get a variety of different views on a certain subject. Also the audience in the group can be from different backgrounds and will have their own opinions. A downfall is that not everyone in the group may get involved, they either are shy and don't feel a need to speak and just listen to everyone else’s ideas or they may not get chance to express their opinions.  
Here is an example of audience research, the information tells media companies what magazines sell to certain people, the audience is grouped by gender, age, background, etc... If you wanted to produce a new magazine for a certain group 'E.G. woman 20+' you would look into information produced by other companies and see what magazines they buy and enjoy most. You would look at a variety of different examples of the magazines and get some ideas of what information and storys they like to read about so your magazine would be bought. class

Secondary research

This is when someone research's something using existing information that has already been gathered by other people or organisations. For example, looking in books, journals, archives, photo libraries, and searching on the Internet. These are all examples of secondary research.

Here is an example of secondary research:

BARB is a primary research website, which I used to find out certain information about certain TV programmes and channels.

I also used RAJAR to find my own secondary research about radio stations . It is the official body in charge of measuring radio audiences in the UK. They use primary research to find out this information.

Many media organisations use information that has been gathered and analysed by another company to add to and support. Sometimes they even use the information to replace their own primary research.

There are many advantages of using secondary research for example:

• The ease of access.
• The low in costs.
• Broadness of information

And many more. There are also many disadvantages of using secondary research, for example:

• The quality of research.
• Incomplete information.
• Research being out-of-date.

Qualitative research

This research is based on opinions, attitudes and preferences rather than facts and figures. This is important to the media industry because it is used to find out what individuals or groups think and feel about certain media products for example; computer games, television programmes or films. Focus groups are used a lot with this as they allow the producer to get direct feedback from a certain amount of people. Questionnaires also allow for specific targeting, this means very precise and targeted questions can be asked. Face to face interviews are also beneficial as they allow the interviewer to listen and watch the response and reaction of the interviewee getting asked the questions.
Qualitative questionnaire are open questions, some examples of open questions are
 'what did you think of our radio show?'
'How could we improve our computer game?'
'Why did you like it?' etc...

Quantitative

This research involves collecting facts and information that can be counted and measured.It can come from both primary and secondary sources, BARB and RAJAR are two companys from media that you can get this information from. This research method is based on collecting statistical data through questionnaires to determine public opinion. Different methods are used to get quantitative research such as, face to face, telephone, postal and online methods. An advantage of quantitative research is it allows the researcher to measure and analyse data. A disadvantage is the amount of people that needs to be studied to find this information.
 An example of quantitative research:

Media companies do this to see whats in the publics interest. BARB collect information on TV programmes to see what the audience wants on TV and what sort of shows to put on.