Question 1: What are the key issues raised in the article and how has qualitative and quantitative research been applied to explore them?

The key issues that are raised in the article is that there is a major increase in the use of tablet use by all aged children, their quantitative research states that “Almost twice as many children aged 5-15 are going online via tablet than in 2013” This was also displayed on the graphs and chart page which makes it easier to be /interpreted. From the key themes and graphs it is clear that from the increase in tablet use it correlates with decrease in use in other sectors such as Television and video games. They also display that from their primary research methods that 12-15 year olds would miss their phone most instead of a TV, this shows that the increase of tablets and phones could be a causation for the decrease in TV use. This could link with the effects model, because the increase in tablet use to watch TV or films influences others to use it to watch TV shows instead of using a TV or going to the cinema. Another key finding is that “Nine in ten parents mediate their child’s access to the internet in some way”. From looking at Figure 1 it is clear that since tablets were created in 2007 the popularity is increased which overall has effected the use of video games and since all ages have access to it, it means that it has a wider audience. The things that are produced are the products that are considered popular, that is cause of so many tablets being made, because that is what is popular. The TV section of Figure 9 shows that the is a consistent trend going down. There is also been a new service called Netflix and YouTube which was introduced a few years. These streaming services have become a lot more popular than TV shows and is considered to be used more than TV.  They have collected lots of primary research which is also mainly quantitative, this can be considered as bias because they didn’t explore an even amount of qualitative and quantitative they have conducted surveys from 2009 till 2014 which is outdated and raises some issues with the results. This relates to the key finding “Almost twice as many children aged 5-15 are going online via tablet than in 2013” this is because they have used quantitative information but does not explain why they prefer it which is qualitative. The great use of quantitative information which is displayed through graphs makes the data more believable and impactful but also supports the lack of qualitative data. The home interviews with parents about children’s media use had issues within the testing process, the problem with this is that by having the children’s parents in the room the children won’t answer with complete honesty.

The conclusion from analysing the Ofcom 2014 report is that the great amount of quantitative data outweighs the qualitative data, the qualitative data had issues with it because it needed to have quotes and shows the age of the person which said it. They should have also displayed the questions which were asked to the sample, without this it allows us to question the reliability and validity.