Research methods and techniques.

Methods:

Primary research- A primary research is a research done by an individual person and is not very big research so it’s just a questionnaire and focus groups, interviews just to gain a little information. For their own research.

Secondary research- This is the research that other people have researched so the information has already been found all you do is take it and use it. Includes collecting data which already exists. This includes using information from reports, publications, and Internet research and company files.

Techniques:

Interviews- When you sit face to face and discuss about the subject and how it can improve and what the person things about the subject their opinion on the subject. Also it can give information about the subject from the consumer.

Advantages

· can ensure the question is fully understood.

· Are useful for straighten out difficult topics.

· The Interviewer can review deeper into a response given by an interviewee.

· Interviews produce a higher response rate.

Disadvantages

· The interviewer can affect the data if he/she is not reliable.

· It is very time consuming.

· It is not used for a large number of people.

· The Interviewer may be biased and ask closed questions.

Focus group – Focus group is a meeting between people who are discussing stuff about a specific subject and speak about it. Share your point of view and listen to others views discuss about their view and your views. Discussing people opinions Focus group is usually used in market research.

Advantages of Focus group – Easily Measure Customer Reaction. It is quick. Good for groups with lower literacy levels. Help people build new connections.

Disadvantages-

Might not be able to get your point across. It might lead to argument.

Might of Remembered your opinions after the meeting is finished. Don’t know if members are telling the truth some might mislead.

Questionnaire- A leaflet or booklet which holds bit information for the consumer and few options which the consumer can tick as their opinion to the change the company is making or just a casual questionnaire to find out what the consumer thinks of the service they are receiving.

Disadvantages –

No way of telling how true the person is being. No way of telling how much a person thought has put in it. Some people might understand question different to other people and therefore you

may receive different answers. Some people not enjoy filling in questionnaire they may have fed up of it. Some age group might not fall into the survey. Some people might just bin it.

Advantages-

Faster. Cheaper. More accurate. Easy to analyse. Easy to spread to people who live far. Can post out large numbers at once.

Using the library- going in and using the computers to find out information looking at books and finding out the information and then building onto it. Also using the librarians to gain some help for the right information and the right book to look at.

Using the internet- using the information which is provided into the web and working onto to it. I have used the internet to find information about the BBC case study and I found at lot of information and put it into my own information. Here is an example of my unit 3 and this is the information I

have found through the internet and I have put it into my own wording for easy understanding of the document.

Reading- This is when you read a document and change it and put it into your own words.

Here you can see at the left is my case study on Sony and at the right is the place where I got the information from ‘Wikipedia’. I have read all the article and I have picked the main information and put it into my work and then put it into my words so it is easy to read and I have taken out difficult words and I have made the information useful for the reader and so that they can understand and also get the reader doesn’t get confused by the big words.

Observation – This is very easy to do its simply just witnessing and taking in information like for example mostly observations are done in education places so in college or school a head of department comes along and joins the class but he/she do not disturb the class nor join in activities. However they do sit quietly with pen and paper and write down any information they need to keep. The person is not only observing the class they observe the teacher and student and few other vital things. As you can see in this link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQ6KeSzJuPs this is an example of an observation of a class.

Searching Archives – This is when you

surf the net to find out any information you need and you use different website and different search engines. Also other than that it is when you go on different websites to find out the information for the subject. In my unit 3 I have searched the internet for the BBC information and this is how I did it. I went on a search engine the most common one ‘Google’ and then I search in my subject. It gives me all these websites about BBC so I picked Wikipedia because I wanted to know about the BBC and know their history , Profit etc.. Over here it shows all of the bbc information that I need to know but I cant only trust one website it may be baised or misleading me so to get unbaised information I searched different websites.

Recce – This is like observing but you find out the different information needed to in that idea. You look an area, you visit that place in order to become familiar with it. People usually recce an area when they are going to return at a later time to do something there. This is an example of a recce form.

Advantage –

You get know the place. Know how many people visit the property etc. Find out more about the place rather than Google

maps.Disadvantages –

Weather problems

Property restriction Traffic problem.

Surveys – It is similar to a questionnaire to find out information and opinion about a certain subject. However in a survey it is made to gain detain and information and in questionnaire they do it to find the statistics of how many people like what. As well the survey is short and takes less time. As you can see there isn’t much to it its quick and easy.

Information trail

Log of library – log of library this is when the library is available on the internet like a book store. E-books are one of them and there are many other one like Google books and kindle store. You can rent books and get some sample and also buy books from them. This is a sample of what the eBooks look like on my college website. This is also known as ebrary which basically means e book. As you can see this has ‘bookshelves’ and other features there are few sample title to look through in this

case its ‘BTEC Nation Business Book’. This is a sample of a book a business book and you can see its pretty much is the same as it would be in a library at the right hand side it shows the index and at the left it shows you what page you’re on. It also gives you easy option of picking the page you want to read by just typing in the page number rather than scrolling. You can all sorts with this you can add it to your book shelf and also you can download it at the same time to read it later on. As well as that you can open the document in your eBook reader for easy reading. You can other things like change pages back and front and zoom into certain page also you can high words.

Advantage/disadvantage of eBooks

Advantage of eBook

o Multimedia format. o No delivery cost.o Searchable.o Low update cost.

Disadvantage of eBooks

o Piracy.o Not suitable to read.o Eye sight can damage. o Can easily be stolen.

Collate

Collecting and combining and document and putting it in proper order. For example you can put it by the date or by file size etc...To have the work organised. Also having an index is useful it makes it very easy to find the subject you need.

Asset Management means saving your work in fully organised folders. For example if you are a photography student and you take thousands of photos of different things each day and you want to save them on your machine. you cannot save it randomly because when it comes to finding them you are going to struggle the pictures will be all over the place so you create folders for different pictures and work and then when it comes to finding the pictures it is fairly easy to find them and it is well organised. Now as you can see my work is organised in folder starting with ‘my work’ and in that there is ‘creative media level 2’ the course I'm doing and ‘induction’ that was when I was getting started with creative media and within that I have my teachers name’s and in each folder there are different units I am doing with different teacher. Now I have been in carols folder and there is a list of different units and the same with other teachers. Also in the units there are different assignment

so for example I have assignment 1 within unit 12 and in assignment 1 I have a folder for task one and in task 1 I have my task and

some notes for that task.

Store

Secure storage: This is when you have storage virtually and a secure one. Like on the ebrary you have to login to save a book that is secure and here you can see how it popped up with an error and it won’t let me add the book to the book shelve.

So to actually save this to my storage I will need to sign in. once signed in this shows up and the book is now saved in the book shelves. And now if you see my book shelve it is in there and I can read it. But if I sign out I won’t be able to view the page again.