HA1 Task 1 - Research Techniques

Research Techniques

Quantitative Research:

This type of research gives you numbers for example if your doing a questionnaire the types of question's that would give you quantitative data are closed questions these questions only give you limited answers like yes or no, a question that gives you no freedom to answer in your own words. There are many methods to obtain quantitative data like surveys or questionnaires or phone pols

This is an example of a type of audience research this site shows how many people play it and the percentage of the gender. The image isn't very clear so here's a link o he site where i got the information from 
http://www.iabuk.net/blog/10-uk-video-game-audience-stats

this type of research would definitely be useful in the game industry because if they need to make a new game hey would want to know what people want but in a numerical and statistical point of view like for example if they were to ask people which game genre they prefer more this type of question would give them numbers and they will be able so see that 70% of the people they asked preferred fantasy over action. 


Qualitative Research:
This type of research gives you words instead of numbers it is the opposite of quantitative research if your doing a questionnaire the questions it would ask for your opinion questions that ask for your opinion are open questions. There are several ways you can obtain qualitative data you do a questionnaire or set up game discussions sometimes they also do focus groups like the video below. The focus group below shows that several people specifically mothers are being questioned about what they think about the game Dead Space 2.

I think that this type of research is very useful for both media and games industry because after releasing a game they would want to know what people think about the product they have released and they get the data they need through game reviews and questionnaires. This process goes through out the whole production process like for example at the start  of the process they would want to know what people would like in the product that hey will be releasing.



Audience profiling:
What is audience profiling? it is a task that that all media institutions need to do when the are creating a new product that will be launched in the market it can be a magazine, film, album, website and etc. When defining an audience, the factors that will have to be considered are:

Age, Gender, race and sexuality

Education.

Occupation.

Annual Income.

Disposable income.

The NRS social grade or National Readership Survey is to classify readers, but are now being used by many organisations for wider applications and are mostly used for market research. They were developed 50 years ago and they got widespread usage in 20th century Britain. 

The grades:
these qualifications are based on what the head of the household has got. There are 6 grades and along with it are 6 social classes or status's

Psycho-graphics is the study in Personality, Values. Opinions, Attitudes, Interests and lifestyles and the market is divided into these 6 social class groups. Whatever the type of product or brand that an individual purchases it will reflect on that persons characteristics and living pattern. The grid below is a list of different types of people.      

Geodemographic is creating an audience profile for a specific geographical location. Like for example London being a busy city with more people and financial district may enjoy games like COD and Fifa more than those people living in the rural countryside.

Audience profiling is useful to games publishers and developers because through geodemographics this they will be able to find out which Games are popular in which area of the country so then they will be able to make games based on the games that are played more in that location and also by using psychographics the games company can set the prices and where the games will be displayed based on what living pattern and characteristics most people have, demographics describe who your customers are and psychographics describes why your customers act as they do.