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.