700 Word report summary

The report was about children and parent’s media uses and attitudes, their findings stated that their sample will be with children with different age groups, but overall it will be 3-15. Throughout the entire article they have predominantly used quantitative research instead of qualitative, this is shown because they have many facts and statistics but not as much qualitative, which could be a problem because they wont know why they sample gave the answers. Some of the key points they have stated are that seven in ten children aged 5-15 now have access to a tablet computer at home, they did not have a balanced amount of qualitative data. 8-11 year olds are spending more time online than 2013, 8-11 year olds are now less likely to believe that all the information that they see on websites used for school work or homework is true (20% vs 36%), or that all the information found on news sites or apps is true (12% vs 26%). This key information shows that there is little to no qualitative information, but from their quantitative research I have discovered that children that are younger are more likely to use tablets and games most.
 The methodology they have used for their primary research that they have done is surveys and interviews, they did not retrieve much qualitative information which can ruin the results of the primary. They have also conducted in home interviews which had a large sample amount 1,660 with parents that have children aged 5-15. They also took another sample to expand the results, they took a sample of 731 parents with children aged 3-4.
The audiences they have chosen to use many different age groups throughout their research, the age groups were children aged 3-4, 5-7, 8-11 and and 5-15. When they conducted their interviews they made sure to interview the children’s parents for all ages because it keeps it reliable. The sample they have chosen to go with is a wide enough to be valid because it has over 2000 total people within the interview, but the interviews were carried out in 2014 which means they might not have the same results if they were done today.
The majority of sections within the report are quantitative, I can tell this because throughout the report paragraphs of statistics were used about how children prefer to spend their time using media. They have also used graphs to display their results in a more informative way. They have also neglected to show the validity of their sources, we do not know if their source is creditable which means they are most likely not an academic source. he authors of the report have not taken into consideration of any qualitative data, because of this the report cannot link any of their qualitative and quantitative research because they have left a gap and the statistics do not have any opinions and answers about why they said that. They have not used any academic sources throughout the report, but they have used a valid source which is Ofcom, this is a valid source because they are television regulator. There are many issues with their primary research in their report, one of the issues is that I have found is that they have not kept the same sample size throughout all of the surveys and interviews, they have not replicated the sample sizes in all the surveys. In 2014 they chose to interview 1,660 parents with children aged 5-15 but in 2014 they increased it to 1,717 parents with children aged 5-15. Another issue I discovered is that they have done all their surveys and interviews at different times within the year, this is an issue because they some children will use increase their media use because they are not at school because school is on break.

In my group I was responsible for collecting one primary research and two secondary sources. The sample size of my survey was 13, this is not as large as it should be because it needed to represent the rest of the United Kingdom, another problem is that I did not make it specific enough. My samples were not large enough to be valid, it also was not aimed at people who are in a subculture. Therefore, my sample is not valid and cannot be used to gather a conclusion. The next time I will do my surveys I will make sure to send them out to more people and to send it out to people of all different ages to get a better representation, this will also give me a wider range of opinions about how the survey takers think about millennials. The target of the survey was millenials and millennials within subcultures, but I did not I have achieved it. I do not think the survey was targeted at subcultures or the whole age group of millennials. The primary research was based on the secondary research that we had discovered but we had not co-operated well enough to find patterns. The questions that were asked throughout the survey did not relate to subcultures which was another problem. However, the questions we asked were clear and enabled us to know whether they knew what a sub-culture was but did not get enough detail about how the got into them.  The cross references were not successful because we did not compare all of our information to make links and differences. The research was not done correctly which meant that I couldn’t correctly give survey questions and receive the correct responses. The finding that were received were relevant to the hypothesis because we linked our points back to it. We did not analyse the data enough because it didn’t have any correlation. Our research does not provide a solid reason for our conclusion because some points clashed with each other. When re doing a research presentation it should be a priority to analyse the results thoroughly to find all correlations. The research we did was not done to aid each other, we all did separate research and didn’t consult each other which resulted in a failure of correlation. Overall I think that we don’t know weather millenials are not in subclutures due to the development of the internet. The worst part of my sections of the PowerPoint is that we did not link the points within the PowerPoint and didn’t link it sub cultures either

A creditable source is a high quality and trustworthy source and we can believe it. When using a creditable source to back up your work it makes your work seem more reliable and improve you the effectiveness of work. The parts to a sources credibility is that the authors point of view because there could be a bias within their work. The bias has a chance to be done by accident but it can also be done on purpose which means their work cannot be reliable. To make sure a work is creditable is by going on google scholar to find books from people who are academically qualified. The level of expertise and experience of the author, this is important because if they do not a have a high level of expertise their work will not be considered creditable. Peer reviewed is an evaluation of academic or professional by others within the same area. Their is also a acronym called CRAAP, which is used to test and evaluate the creditability of work. The C stands for currency, when was the information created and published, when was it updated and is it still valid to today. R stands for relevance, is the information that is presented relevant to the topic, is the readership level at the correct level. A stands for authority, are the authors and the editors who created it have academic authority? are their articles peer reviewed by other professionals? Who are the publishers (Scholarly presses, Popular presses or Self-Published) The A stands for accuracy, is the sourced information relevant to your topic, how many relevant sources are mentioned. Finally, P stands for purpose, what is the purpose, what is the authors bias and how might it influence the information, there can be more than one perspective on an issue. Wikipedia is not a useful source for information, this is because it can be edited by anyone who logs in to the website. The websites information is very unreliable because anyone can edit it and is not reviewed by professionals. Google scholar is a useful search engine because it filters through the internet for academic books and reports, the pieces of work that has been peer reviewed by other professionals.

Research Methods

Primary Research Method

There are many ways which primary research can be conducted such as, a focus group, questionnaire, survey, interview, experiment and observation. A focus group is group of people that are assembled to participate in a discussion about a product or topic. The benefits of using a focus group as your primary research method because it allows you to get a detailed answer about the persons opinion. Another benefit of having a focus group is that it can save you a lot more time because you are getting multiple responses at once and it means you can pick the suitable sample for your focus group as well. Along with benefits it also has limitations, one of the limitations are is that with multiple people in one room and if there is a disagreement it could cause an argument. An additional limitation is that the sample might not react naturally because of the pressure of people in the room. Although a focus group is a good source of primary research the main three method, survey, experiment and observation are the most effective. An observation allows you to watch another person’s experiment and get to see someone’s behaviour first hand. The information that sample give may be false due to the fact that it may feel uncomfortable with being observed/filmed, but u will be able to analyse and compare it with other experiments or see if the results match any theories that have been made. A survey is one of the easiest and most convenient research method. You can make a survey using anything, but the most effective option is survey monkey, using this website will allow you to make a survey, send out a link for people to click and all the results is automatically converts into charts making it easier to display. Advantages of using this is that it you can post the link of your survey on social media to get more people to do it. Surveys also have disadvantages such as they can skip your questions.  An experiment is like an observation except you are controlling it and you engaging with it. By using an experiment, it will give you a natural reaction which is more accurate.  Advantages of using an experiment is that it allows you to have a high level of control on your research and you can change your variables to a wide range of results. Experiments also take up a lot of time to complete an experiment and there are also many chances for human errors.

Secondary Research Methods

When searching for secondary research you have to be careful to make sure that all sources that have been founded are academic sources such as books and theories made by university professors because it is there job to do research and work on theories. You can use a website called google scholar when looking academic sources, this is because it will filter through websites and show books made by professors and other valid sources. Another form of secondary research is looking at previous experiments done by other people, this is to get a better understanding of how to do your primary research, if you are also doing an experiment for primary research you can find points they did wrong and correct it in yours. Finally you can get secondary research from going to the library and finding a book that relates to your topic. The advantages of getting secondary research is that you can retrieve research from anywhere because of the internet. In addition, it cost almost nothing to acquire secondary research compared to primary which requires time and money. Finally the secondary research that is done will make the primary research that is yet to be done easier, because you can base questions, sample or experiment off  your valid sources from the secondary research. There are also disadvantages along with secondary research such as that the research will most likely not be specific to what you are looking for. Another limitation is that the quality of the research may not be good enough because it could be biased which means the information must be analysed to assure validity and reliability.

Qualitative Research

Qualitative research is a type of research information which gives you an opinion/feeling on a topic, this gives us a better understanding how majority of people feel about a topic such as violence in the media.  The advantages of getting qualitative research is that it will give you a better understanding on how people feel, unlike quantitative which only gives you statistics. When doing research methods such as an interview, survey or focus group you do not have to limit yourself to closed questions, by having a mixture of open questions and closed it allows you to get a wider range of answers and opinions. This data is more difficult to assess and display, this because it’s very unlikely for the information that is qualitative to be the same, qualitative research does not represent any statistics therefore it cannot be displayed without any quantitative data to back it up.

Quantitative Research

Quantitative research is a type of research information which pairs along with qualitative. Quantitative research is statistical data that is obtained through research. The research is used to gain numerical data, which is easier to display because it can be put into graphs, charts and tables. The advantages of quantitative research are that you can get a much larger sample size with and still have a lot of control because it is only closed question answers which means they will be easy to count up. The limitations of quantitative research is that you cannot find out how or why they gave those answers.

Sample

A sample is a group of people you are going to be using for your primary research. It is a process of selecting a group of people and using them to get your primary research. The sample has to be a large size if you are representing an even larger demographic. The advantages of samples are that you can choose your sample to meet your specific requirements. The limitations of this is that you cannot represent the whole populations beliefs with your sample.

Open & Closed Questions

An open question is a question which people have different opinion about and there is not a correct answer. These questions are harder to put display to people, but they give more detail into why and how. A closed question is a question which can be answered with a one-word answer (Yes or No). These questions do not require as much thought as an open question. The advantages of an open question are that you will get a much more detailed answer and improve your understanding. The disadvantage is that you cannot put the results into graphs or tables. The advantages of closed questions is that you can put all results into graphs with ease. The limitation is that you will only be given a one-word answer and nothing else.