Audience research pt1

Audience Research 

During My Pitch, I gathered a general overview of an audience for my documentary. However, I felt like in order to work out what I really need to put in/ what the audience wanted; I would need to conduct more research.

The things I wanted to find out was;

-The specific ages of my audiences 

-The experiences of my audience

-what my audience knew about LGBT support in the north east

-how many people would be interested in my initial idea. 

How would i gather this research?

There are two ways to gather audience research; Focus group & Surveys.

I decided to do the survey first as I knew it would be quick to make and give me a base to develop more in-depth questions for my focus group.

What is a survey?

A survey is a method of gathering information from a sample of people, traditionally with the intention of generalizing the results to a larger population. Surveys provide a critical source of data and insights for nearly everyone engaged in the information economy, from businesses and the media to government and academics.

How to run a successful survey

(https://www.qualtrics.com/blog/10-tips-for-building-effective-surveys/)

1. Define the purpose-why are you doing the survey, what is the purpose of, How will this help with your project?
2. Keep it short and simple-Responders are less likely to complete a survey that is lengthy or that flick from topic to topic.
3. Ask direct questions-vaguely worded questions will confuse the responder
4. Avoid biased questions-avoid certain words or phrases that may led your responders to answer in a particular way.
5. keep it straightforward 

My survey

I published my survey on the 06/10/21 and sent it to;

• My college class (Creative Media YR2, Level 3) 
• True colours (Sunderland college) 
• GSD (Durham sixth form) 
• & My LGBT friends who don’t attend either colleges. 

Since I published my survey, I have received a total of 57 responses

Summary of survey

ONLY AUDIENCE RELATED QUESTIONS

Question 1

I asked this question as a way to establish an age demographic for my documentary; Sunderland culture had given an outline of the age demographic (16-25) and i felt like it was too broad so i wanted to narrow my audience down to just teens.

• From my survey 46.5% (26) of people were aged 33.3% (19) of people were aged 17 and the other 21.1% (12) of people were aged 18-19+.
• This shows that my main audience would be people aged 16-17 which makes sense to my project as i would like to keep it to just college/upper end secondary students.

Question 2&3

I asked these next two questions as a way to establish which responders fit into the the lgbtqia+ gender identities(e.g. trans and non-binary);I wanted to do this to know what kind of support groups/information i would  need to include in my documentary about gender identity. 

• From my survey 22.8% (13) people identify as non-binary, 3.5% (2) people identify as genderfluid, 3.6% (2) people identify as Demi-girl, 1.8% (1) of people identify as A-gender and 68.4% of people identify as male & female; out of those 68.4%, 7.02% (4) people identify as trans (either mft or ftm).
• To summarize, out of the 57 people who partook in the survey, 38.72% of people do not identify as the gender they were given at birth, these people are all members of the lgbtqia+ community. This allows me to understand that a portion of my documentary must focus on the trans community in the North East and the services available to them.
  

Question 4

I asked this question for the same reason I asked questions 2 & 3, as I way to have a wider understanding of my audience and the information I would need to have available to them in my documentary.

• From my survey, 84.21% of responders identify as a label under the lgbtqia+ community, which I expected as my survey was mainly sent to GSA (gay-straight alliance) college groups. 
• From my survey, I can conclude that both colleges have quite a big bisexual (21.1%), gay (14%) and lesbian (12.3%) community. I know this survey isn't representative of the whole of the North East (as 2 colleges doesn't cover the 2.6 million people living in the north east) but it gives me a general overview of the main groups I should be marketing towards/ researching about for my documentary.

Question 4,5 & 6

These last two questions where to gage whether people would actually watch my documentary. 

I asked questions 4 & 5 to try and back up the point in my pitch where i said that i felt like queer youth aren't aware of the support around them.

-Out of 57 people, 71.9% (41) of people are not aware of any lgbt organisations in the north east meaning if they were struggling with problems due to their sexuality, they would not know where to go for help.

-Out of 57 people, 78.9% if people were interested in finding out about LGBTQIA organisations in the North East and 91.2% (52) of people would watch a documentary about the LGBTQIA+ experience in the North east.

This means that if i was to release my documentary; i would have a small audience that would be interested in it.