The Nature and Purposes of Research in the Creative Media Industries

There are several types of research in the creative media industries .

Audience research deals with the investigations of the audience of media products. This type of research analyses what kind of people watch media products, what media products they choose and why. 

Market research involves investigations into target markets, competition, and consumers' demands.

Production research is conducted to get information about a media product (its content, locations,etc).

To conduct these types of research academic research methods are used: primary and secondary research.

Primary research involves original material and information. Primary research includes interview techniques, observations, questionnaires, surveys, participation in internet forums.Very often it is lengthy to conduct. However, the results of this research are more relevant because the research comes straight from original source. The two basic types of primary research are quantitative research and qualitative research. Quantitative research concerns information that you can measure in data, numbers and figures.The qualitative research does not rely on statistics or numbers. I have conducted a survey as primary research, which presents people's opinions on documentaries and freestyle football.

As you can see from this graph, 47% of all respondents were teenagers of 10-19 years old, 33% were young adults of 20-26 years old and 20% were 27-46 years old. In my opinion, the documentary should succeed in the appropriateness to target audience.

Almost a half of the respondents (47 %) have heard about freestyle football. However, the other half of the respondents have heard nothing about the sport.
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When I asked people 'Have you ever seen freestyle football on TV?', most people (93%) answered 'No'.

Fortunately, the vast majority of respondents(93%) would like to know more about this sport.

Interestingly, only 60% of the respondents watch documentary films. The rest 40% of the respondents think that documentaries are boring.

Good news that despite the lack of interest in documentaries, almost all respondents (93%) would like to watch a documentary about football freestyle.
I have interviewed a football freestyle professional

2. Secondary research includes data that has already been collected.  Secondary research includes books, journals, reference-based books and directories, periodicals, newspapers, film archives, photo libraries, internet. The purpose of this research is to identify key facts about the topic.The advantage of using secondary data is that it can save a great deal of time.  It takes much longer to collect new data (primary data) than to retrieve information that is already out there.  Also, it is much cheaper to get secondary data than primary data.
To collect secondary research data for my documentary, I gathered all information on freestyle football through the worldwide web. Here are my findings:

• It is the art and sport of juggling a football using all parts of the body to entertain audiences and outperform opponents in competitions
• The Freestyle Football Federation (F3) is world governing body for the sport that is committed to growing awareness of and participation in freestyle football worldwide. F3 own the World Freestyle Football Championships 
• Freestyle football has existed since 2000
• There are some freestyle football  internationally well-known websites are: Global Freestyle, UK Football Freestyle, BeyondFootball and Freestyle Football Federation

I also looked at existing news stories based around my idea:
http://www.eventmagazine.co.uk/Destinations/article/1291727/manchester-host-freestyle-football-championships/
http://www.beyondfootball.com/socialnetwork/freestyle-soccer-news
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/62323-freestyle-football-taking-football-to-the-next-level
I have also watched existing documentaries that are similar to my idea:

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A historical film ‘Ivan the Terrible’ relies on extensive primary research, which is based on original Russian history sources. The author of the film conducted a thorough research into costumes, haircuts, makeup, and props of that time. However, the film is not fully committed to historical accuracy. The film keeps history behind it, but also captivates the attention of the audience, of not being boring. Therefore, an audience research is necessary to conduct before filming a historical drama. Thanks to this research Eisenstein was able to touch the audience's feelings through the movie's storytelling and  depiction of the characters. Eisenstein tried to rehabilitate the czar, explaining that ''the personality of Ivan the Terrible and his historic role had to be thoroughly reconsidered. Ivan the IV's principal aim was to create a strong centralized sovereign State in place of the scattered, mutually hostile feudal principalities of Old Russia. [...] The heirs to the feudal lords [boyars and royal clans with ambitions to rule] did not scruple to resort to treachery and conspiracy. They secretly prepared the ground for an invasion of Russia by their western neighbors [Livonian Knights, Lithuanian and Polish forces], and it was they who cried to heaven about the cruelty and bloodthirstiness of the Moscow Tsar''.

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Audience research (audience data, audience profiling, demographics, geodemographics, consumer behaviour, consumer attitudes, audience awareness)

Market research (product market, competition, competitor analysis, advertising placement, advertising effects)

Production research (content, viability, placement media, finance, costs, technological resources, personnel, locations)
Data gathering agencies

The Broadcasters' Audience Research Board (BARB) is the organisation that gather data concerning audience measurement and television ratings in the United Kingdom. There are also three  market research companies in the UK: RSMB, Ipsos MORI, and Kantar Media.
RSMB are responsible for survey design, quality control and calculation methodology. Ipsos MORI are responsible for survey of the characteristics of the television owning population. Kantar Media is responsible for covering meter panel installation, data retrieval, processing and audience reporting functions.

RAJAR stands for Radio Joint Audience Research. It is the official body in charge of measuring radio audiences in the UK. Here is one of their data releases:

You can find more data releases here.
Assessing research data
It is vital to choose the right research methods to ensure that the collected information is reliable and valid. .
Reliability is the degree to which the study produces stable and consistent results. It is necessary to keep in mind the following questions while assessing the reliability:

•  Can it be trusted as a source of information?
•  Could it be biased  by people's opinions or affected by flaws in the research methods? 
•  If the research activity was done again, would it get the same results?

I suppose that my research is reliable because I conducted a questionnaire where more than one person was asked. However, there is always a place for improvement. It could be more reliable if more people would answer the questions (I got only 15 respondents).
Of course, reliability is vital, but it is not sufficient without validity.  For a research to be reliable, it also needs to be valid.
Validity concerns the relevance of information to the investigation. Validity refers to how well a research measures what it is aimed to measure.
Representativeness and generalisability
The participants in the research were representative of the population. Therefore, the data is generalisable. Generally, my target audience was interested in the concept of my documentary.