Methods of Research

The research methods that I intend use are Primary, Secondary, Quantitative and Qualitative research. This is because Primary research is a great way to personally find information about music magazines and what people like the best in these magazines. I can do this by using questionnaires and surveys, but also by using internet forums to get a wide audience feedback. By using an internet forum, this can improve my information intake greatly as I won't only get a variety of people but also from a variety of places across the UK, or from around the world if I do not limit the forum.

Secondary research will be good to get information about music magazines that I cannot get from Primary research, such as surveys. For this I could use magazines, books or the NRS. The NRS website tells magazine producers about how many people buy their and other magazines. It also allows us it see the ages of such buyers, such as 15-34 and 35+. This website also tells readers how many people from a certain class buy their magazine. The classes of people are divided into two sectors, ABC1 and C2DE. ABC1 is the higher and the C2DE is the lower. Usually the higher class buy more magazines as they have more money to spend. But, the NRS website is a very 'blunt tool' when looking for information such as this. The age barriers are very limited, and this would not help if wanting to specify a target market.

Quantitative research helps to identify patterns and trends, e.g more men than women read 'kerrang!'. These patterns can help establish a target market and what to put more of in a magazine to make it more appealing to that area of the audience. Also, Quantitative research helps identify more about the numbers and specifies what ages buy the magazine.

Qualitative research is very similar to Primary research in the sense that it gets people's opinions straight from them, like a survey. But with Qualitative research it gains opinions and ideas about the magazine. This can be done through Primary research or through Secondary research.