Overall I don’t think I found out as much as I could have. I think that my secondary research method could have been better as I mainly used web based sources to find information. Some sites were quite similar and others were not reliable when it came to gathering up information e.g. the forum sites. I think I obtained useful quotes from the sites that helped me understand TV on Demand more and they were good to compare with my primary research findings. I didn’t achieve any quantitative data through secondary research such as growth statistics or charts which I feel could have been a benefit to the investigation as my own statistical results were limited.
I think my primary research helped me gather lots of opinions from people who have knowledge on TV on Demand and I think this was effective when comparing it to information found from the web. If I had to do it again however I would use a bigger variety of age groups in my focus group because I feel I only achieved a ‘Teenage perspective’ on it. Also I think I needed a wider range of demographics to uncover more information on who uses TV on demand. I realised I had only focused on age and missed out on important aspects like gender and social status. I don’t think I had planned my questions enough beforehand and I could have created a better variety of questions to ask the participants. I think I asked too many closed questions which didn’t give me much information, just a short response. I only asked 6 questions because we had such a short time limit and I think if more questions were answered I would have got a clearer view of how TV on demand is perceived by the group.
For the 3 different types of primary research I decided to do a focus group, a one on one interview and a comparative analysis. With the focus group I think I achieved useful answers however it was quite rushed so didn’t leave enough time for fully informative answers from the participants. I saw that I kept getting quite similar answers from everyone and I feel this was because they were all a similar age group so they all shared similar experiences with TV on demand. I recorded the answers by getting a fellow participant to read out the questions then I would write down what everyone had said. I think because they had said short answers I was able to quickly jot down everyone’s answers without any hassle, however I don’t believe that it was a good way of recording answers because if I had a larger group or a participant who spoke a lot I may well miss some vital information they had said.
I then chose to do a comparative analysis to compare the top 4 on demand websites. I did this because I wanted to compare the ease of use of the websites and whether this had any effect on how many people use the websites and which one is most popular. I think I did a good analysis of the websites and found practical information. I was hoping to find figures of audience ratings or how many people use the sites to do a quantitative analysis but I was unable to find any. I looked on ‘DoubleClickAdPlanner’ for any data but was only shown some for the entire channel website and not specifically the on demand site. If I was able to find some data and include it in my report I think it would have been really beneficial to the study and I think it would have been good to relate to my comparison of ease of use for each website.
Lastly I did a one on one interview with a student from my class. I definitely picked the right person to do this as she was very knowledgeable on TV on demand and had lots to discuss on it because she had many experiences with it. She did have many answers that were similar to those said in the focus group however she was able to expand it more to give me more information. I recorded her answers by taking a video of her so I could hear her answers and then jot them down later. This was a useful way because I was able to make her feel like I was listening and I could engage with her when she was talking to me. Later I listened back to it and wrote down what she said.
For my secondary research I realised it wasn’t easy to tell if the sites were reliable or not. I was able to find information from sites such as ‘Media Guardian’, ‘The Telegraph’ and ‘ThinkBox TV’ where all the writers were media professionals and from trusted sources. Even though they are known for being reliable I did take in to content that the writers could be biased in their writing but if they were able to back up their points I feel I could trust it. I did find sources that were unreliable because they were from forums where anyone can post their thoughts and opinions on the topic. I think finding unreliable sources didn’t really have any impact on my report because the information I found I couldn’t trust and therefore I didn’t want to mislead those seeing my report with false information.
If I had to do the research over again there are many things I would do differently to give me greater results. One thing I would do differently is spend less time searching online and look up information in other resources e.g. books. I think that I may have missed out on important data that could have been used in my report. I wasn’t inquisitive enough meaning I didn’t look deeper in my secondary research. I would generally type the same things into Google over and over again and click on the first couple of links that came up. I should have typed different alternatives in Google and look on the other pages available. Also I should have used more search engines because Google is quite biased in the way it orders the results, mostly for commercial reasons. I did only try Yahoo and Ask Jeeves once then eventually went back to Google.
Another thing I would do differently is add numerical data to my report. I think having graphs on my report would have been a good visual aid for people to see the growth of TV on demand e.g. who watches it, viewing numbers, popular channels etc.
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