Essay for Assignment 3

Essay for assignment 3

My research was based on finding information about teenagers living in Banstead. I was trying to research about this because I want to film a documentary on teenagers living in Banstead and what social activities there are to do in Banstead.

The types of research I undertook was Primary and secondary research, audience research, market research and also production research.

The first part of researching I done was secondary research. For this research it involved finding readership circulation figures for cinemas in the local area and I found out that it was £12 a ticket for an adult and a family of 4 would spend £50 to go to the cinema. I also had to find box office figures of documentaries and see how successful they went with their documentary.

Primary research was another type of research I undertook and this was very important as I had to do a questionnaire and a face-to-face interview with someone who lives in Banstead to find out more about what social activities there are to do in Banstead. With my questionnaire I was finding quantitative information as they was giving me numerical data for example one of the questions was:

How often do you travel outside of Banstead to enjoy social activities?

·         A) Weekly

·         B) Daily

·         C) Monthly

·         D) Rarely

60% of people who took this questionnaire said they need to travel outside of Banstead weekly to enjoy social activities which is very important to my research.

The results from my questionnaire was very important to me as it showed what a group of teenagers think of Banstead for its social activities.

Below will be the full table of what I found.

	Person 1	Person 2	Person 3	Person 4	Person 5	Person 6	Person 7	Person 8	Person 9	Person 10
Question 1: Do you live in Banstead or near it?	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Question 2: Are you between the ages 13-19?	16	17	17	16	17	17	17	17	16	16
Question 3: Are you male or female?	Male	Female	Male	Male	Male	Male	Female	Female	Male	Female
Question 4: Which local attractions would you go to?	Café Italia	Café Italia	The Woolpack	The Woolpack	Café Italia	Café Italia	The Woolpack	The Woolpack	The Woolpack	The Lavender Fields
Question 5: What would you rate Banstead out of 5? (5 being the highest 1 being the lowest)	3	2	3	3	2	1	3	1	1	2
Question 6: Do you travel outside of Banstead to enjoy socialising time?	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	No	No	Yes	Yes
Question 7: How often do you travel outside of Banstead for social activity?	Weekly	Daily	Monthly	Weekly	Weekly	Weekly	Monthly	Rarely	Weekly	Weekly
Question 8: How much do you think it would cost a family to go to the cinema in Kingston?	£40	£50	£50	£30	£50	£30	£30	$40	£40	£40
Question 9: Have the lack of activities got you involved with criminal activities?	No	No	No	No	Yes	No	Yes	No	No	No

Another part of my primary research was to undertake an interview with a teenager who lives in Banstead. This helped my find a more in depth answer about what social activities there are to do in Banstead and this has definitely moved my research forward. Finally I did a controlled observation and in this observation I printed out leaflets of things to do in Banstead and left them in the table of the sixth form centre which people picked up and I would observe their reactions towards the activities. This helped my research massively because it showed what would interest people around my age group and what they would like to do in their free/social time.

I undertook audience research and market research and this all helped me towards my overall goal because I chose a target audience for this documentary and I feel like maybe the older group of people would watch it instead of the younger teens.

I found out that there isn’t a lot of social activities for teenagers to do in Banstead and this is very important as in the face-to-face interview I did as part of my primary research, the person I interviewed said that young teens could get into drugs and crime purely because there is such a lack of activities to do that they seem bored. This is really important to my research and my media film production because Banstead need to have more facilities for not just the younger teenagers but also the older teens. As part of my secondary research I went onto trip advisor and I found out that there was only three attractions for Banstead they were:

·         The Lavender Fields

·         The Woolpack

·         Café Italia

This was really important to my research purely because none of these local attractions would attract teenagers besides the Woolpack but again the teenagers would have to be 18 and above to enjoy it, and it still doesn’t satisfy the young teenagers in Banstead.

I have gotten all the research needed for the production stage, and by doing this research and preparation for my documentary about the social activities for teenagers living in Banstead, it has given me a massive helping hand on what to include in my film. From the research it has given me reliable information which I could use in my documentary and use what I have found within the film itself.

Questionnaire questions:

·       Do you live in Banstead or near it?

·    Are you between the ages 13-19?

·    Are you male or female?

·    Which local attractions would you go to?

Café Italia

The Woolpack

The Lavender Fields

·    What would you rate Banstead out of 5? (5 being the highest 1 being the lowest)

·    Do you travel outside of Banstead to enjoy socialising time?

·    How often do you travel outside of Banstead for social activity?

·    How much do you think it would cost a family to go to the cinema in Kingston?

£20

£30

£50

£60

·    Have the lack of activities got you involved with criminal activities?

Interview questions:

Which local attraction would you got to? The Woolpack? Café Italia or the Lavender Fields?

Do you have to travel outside of Banstead to enjoy social time with friends and family?

Do you think the lack of activities in Banstead gets young people involved in criminal activities? If yes why.

What’s the transport like in Banstead? How can it be improved?

Is finding employment difficult to find in Banstead?

Interview

Purposes of Research: Market Research

Market Research
Product market; competition; competitor analysis; advertisment placement; advertisment effectiveness.

Product Market
Product testing allows you to test whether or not the product will meet the target audiences' needs. This would help fine research about my film because I can do a poll to get the target market opinion:

What should the name of the documentary be?
A) A Walk to Beautiful  /
B) Bigger Stronger Faster /
C) Social Life: Banstead //
D) Billy the Kid  ////

My film name was unsuccessful in the market place. I created a market poll to see if it would have been successful

Competitive analysis
Things we do that they don’t	We offer a regional outlook than other documentaries.
Things we do better than them	We know what teens are like as we are teens.
Things we do equally well	Undertake research about teenagers, both do interviews
Things they do better than us	They had a budget a crew, talent, access to a range of equipment.

Advertising placement

The Woolpack – Pint glass

The youth club – T-shirt

Energy drinks from local newsagents

Lorimers pens and essentials

Primark clothing could be worn because there are no tags on the clothes.

Competition

With the competition we offer a range of things that my competitors don't. We offer a regional outlook whereas most documentaries do not have that outlook. Also we have better knowledge of teens these days as I am a teenager, and finally we do not have a budget whereas these big documentaries have a budget.

Advertising Effectiveness 

Advertising effectiveness is very important because by the advertising campaigns we produce we will need to know how effective it was against consumers so we could hire someone to do an advert that will appear on a website and they will be able to tell you how many people clicked on the advert. This will be important for my production because I want people to be aware of my documentary that I am producing.

Observation

Controlled Observation - The research decides where the observation would take place, at which time, with what participants, in what circumstances and uses a standardised procedure.

Rather than writing a detailed description of all behaviour observed, it is often easier to code behvaiour according to a previously agreed scale using a behaviour schedule.

The researcher systematically classifies the behaviour they observe into distinct categories. Coding might involve numbers or letters to describe a characteristic, or use of a scale to measure behaviour intensity.

Naturalistic Observation - Naturalistic observation involves studying the spontaneous behaviour of the participants in natural surroundings.

Participant Observation - Participant observation is a variant of the above but here the researcher joins in and becomes part of the group. For example a mystery shopper, an undercover Police Officer. The researcher takes a false identity an the real identity is concealed from the group.

Evaluating Controlled Observation

Evaluating Controlled Observation

I conducted a controlled observation to monitor attitudes and reveal truths about what social activities do young people do in Banstead. I chose this method over natural /participant observations because I found that doing the controlled observation method was a lot easier to perform to this sort of research. Natural observation would have been difficult because it would’ve required me to monitor the people in their natural habitat, so that means having to go to the activities that they were going to and would’ve been difficult to keep an eye on them at all times. Another reason why I didn’t choose natural observation is that some people may not feel comfortable with a new person in the group which could make this experiment fail. Participant observation again would’ve been difficult to do because it would have again required me to get involved in what they were doing and would’ve been difficult to monitor them in that observation. 

I looked at existing experiments to come up with my own controlled observation so the experiment I looked at was the “marshmallow test”. It was developed by psychologist Walter Michel back in the 1960’s, the experiment was about studying pre-schoolers’ and the ability to delay gratification. The children were left in a room alone with a single marshmallow left in front of them and if they could refrain from eating that marshmallow the researcher would come back in the room to give the child two marshmallows. Overall this experiment helped me with my own experiment and gave me the idea of giving something physical to see how they would react to the material.

My table that I created for this controlled observation was fairly reliable. I think this because maybe I could’ve changed the wording slightly and maybe put different columns in to make the research go further, for example maybe change the column of “sarcastic remarks” to something different to help make the experiment go further. 

In order to make this research more valid, I could add an extra person to the observation which could reduce biasness which could make the research more valid and reliable. Another way to make the research more valid is to add more measurements to the table so then you won’t be grouping behaviours together.

The strengths of my observation was that I had a range of leaflets placed on the table for people to look at so I could do my observation as successful as possible. I had a range of different people who took a look at the leaflets and they reacted in all different ways which made my experiment very successful. The weaknesses of my observation are that maybe my table could’ve been updated more with more emotions and reactions towards the leaflets.

I found from my results that not many people found the leaflets very appealing to them but some people found them more appealing than others as they found the leaflets more appealing which made it very equal in what I found.

This is one of the tables in which I marked on one of the participants:

Rating out of 5 (1 being low and 5 being high)	Interest in Activity	Not interested in Activity	Looking at the leaflet and throwing it back down straight away	Laugh	Comments on the leaflet	Sarcastic Remarks
1				ü		ü
2			ü		ü
3		ü
4	ü
5

This table shows that the participant was intrigued about the leaflets and took it very seriously as they was showing that they was interested in the activities shown. 

In conclusion this research has forwarded my documentary because the results I found was very useful because it shows a range of views on what sort of activities there are in Banstead and some people found the leaflets very boring whereas some people found it very interesting and this research will definitely put forward my documentary.

Bibliography

Marshmallow Test: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/books/the-marshmallow-test-understanding-self-control-and-how-to-master-it-by-walter-mischel/2015716.article