HA7 - Task 1 - Research Techniques

When doing research, there are 2 main ways of doing research, both of the ways can and are very effective if used in a correct way. Combining them together will make sure that you will get proper results that then you can use to your advantage in the future.

Quantitative Research, i.e. numerical data, factual information:

Quantitative Research is done, as the name suggests, in large quantities, on a large group of people. These surveys are usually done as a single question surveys to save time and resources as well as for the ease of asking, that is why it is very crucial to formulate the question well so that it is understood and can be answered quickly. The type of data therefore that is collected from quantitative surveys is usually numerical - easy to accumulate, store and sort, it is also usually a question based on a fact (example: is Volvo a company or not?). A lot of quantitative data will be presented in a form of a pie/bar chart and percents.

While this kind of research does not tell you people's opinion on certain topics for example, it does provide an insight into how many people know something,

People can create their own quantitative surveys for people to answers on things like Survey Monkey and Strawpoll.

A good example of quantitative research is recent research done by Digital Britain, where they see how many people and what kind of people consume what media and how much of it.

                        
                                             http://www.iabuk.net/news/33-million-uk-game-players

Qualitative Research, i.e. word data, opinionated information:

Qualitative Research is the opposite of quantitative research, while quantitative research can survey a lot of people quite quickly, it doesn't get that much detailing in there as qualitative research can. Qualitative research focuses on much less people, but rather than doing something like asking a single question, it hands in a whole survey, included with opinions/comments which allows for a much greater understanding after questioning.

So qualitative research, in comparison to quantitative research, is rather a word data than numerical data, and has a lot of opinion within the answers rather than straight factual information.

Qualitative data takes a lot more time to collect, can eat up more resources, and is much harder to organise, since you can't just put it in certain categories since each opinion is completely different to one another. But in the end is worth it nonetheless.

Examples of Quantitative and Qualitative data:

There are many examples of both the quantitative and qualitative data, a good example of a quantitative can be a website, such as survey monkey, where people can create quick surveys with a couple of factual answers, which then gets sorted automatically:

                         
                                            http://blog.soton.ac.uk/oneshare/2011/06/22/sle-online-survey-tools-review/

A good example of a qualitative data can be found on Youtube, the technology of free streaming and sharing is so popular today that there are professional reviewers on Youtube that review games and post up the videos up on the platform allowing other users to see it, a good example is a British Youtuber called Total Biscuit who is considered the No.1 PC Gaming Critic on Youtube and who does daily reviews of new games.

       

Another important thing to notice about this is that not only does this video provide the qualitative data that someone might be looking for, but also the user can go down and find many comments under the video who might also provide a lot of useful qualitative data, making this way of researching qualitative data very good and convenient for the researcher.

While you can make out many opinions in the comments underneath the video, many companies create promos of their upcoming games to promote them and also to show how different audiences react to their media piece. This is a more direct way of doing qualitative research.

A good example of that is another Youtube channel called the FineBrothers, which does react videos to many different things, they have 4 different audiences of people reacting to different things. They are as follows: Children, Teenagers, Elders and lastly other famous Youtubers.

In the following video, they have a bunch of elders react to Call of Duty Black Ops 2, many of them react in the expected for their age way, but there are some which also behave differently.

           

Target Audience Profiling, i.e. how to pick the target audience that you are going to survey and how to do it correctly:

In order for a good survey to take place, before the actual survey there must be target audience profiling done, the matter is so delicate and so crucial in this that there are entire universities that are dedicated to teach people this skill. If you will try to ask a question that is specifically designed for gamers, it is then quite obvious that you will not go around the entire Earth and ask the question to every gamer on the planet. You will need a sample of gamers that you will ask, but picking that sample is very crucial, if picked incorrectly it can give biased results that will be of no use or can misinform the person doing the survey.
There are multiple ways to get a biased survey, for example, asking people who all play the same game might be biased, or asking people who all know each other might be biased, or asking people who all have similar interests might be biased. There are literally thousands of things to consider when picking out a sample for the survey.

A number of factors is usually taken into consideration to not get a biased result from profiling:

Age, Gender, Race and Sexuality
Education
Occupation
Annual Income
Disposable Income
Current Lifestyle / Aspirational or Desired  Lifestyle
Culture
Media Interests
Buying Habits
Loyalty to Brands

There are a lot of other things to consider when collecting a survey sample, such as the demographics (what job they are working at), psychographics (their usual/expected behaviour) and geodemographics (where they live - people from the same neighborhoods will most likely have quite similar opinions).
In terms of demographics and psychographics, a special survey organisation called the NRS is conducting a lot of research into different people, and what they play, and how they play it, this allows companies to know exactly how and where to aim their product.

Demographics:

                         
                     https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq1XdCWf2nhFk1hwIFSVa28tG-2QQC5-WczIRPt2lH0d3RWN4ZSV00ytR5dRYFJoEJ_YQAXgvjNuKXXK6UkDDz2o9y32P2WIUlU-2aFYD1U5Dak0mkfW7jskMs-i9MAB-FO4Z2383vGDc/s1600/media+class+system.png

Psychographics:

                                  
                   https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQQ0ZdHOtX5auhPPKsCeDgsSD-Wo9Lt_6gqxFDFdeWdRO-krpLLvn-86zp0Lhdu_9DlSar3GJWmdUSezzDcMv7SLrJh50WulH4Jzb60mw90HuZcHmrc_FB_u_bTpppkdiwozb0xuV1rroB/s1600/psyco.jpg

Geodemographics:

                              

                                                                  http://www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/casa/events/images/gg1.png

After all of this is taken into consideration, one must pick a specific way to research and where to conduct it, for example, in the middle of the city, most people will most likely not stop to fill out a full qualitative questionnaire but they might ask one quantitative question.