MEDIA STUDIESSURVEY RESULTS ANALYSIS

AOIFE RANYELL

As part of my initial magazine research, I created a 10 question, questionnaire on surveymonkey.com. The survey was online and available to complete for anybody who chose to complete it for around 1 month. I received only 6 responses which in conclusion means that the questionnaire results cannot be applied to the general public and then in turn my target audience. However the results that I have collected still aide me in my magazine research which is why I am now going to analyse each of the results from every question to understand more about the results that I have collected, this way I will be able to create a magazine product that appeals to my audience.

“What is your gender?”

My first question is a typical opening question: “What is your gender?”. 100% of the answers that where given replied back with “female”. This is a difficult question to analyse because there is not much context included with the results. As all of the participants where female, and considering this is what I plan to be my main target audience, this means that all of the results are based on females thoughts and feelings. Because this is my main target audience the results help me create a more appealing magazine product, if the results showed that most of the answers where filled out by men then they would not be as applicable for me to create a suitable product for a female based target audience.

“What is your age?”

The second question I asked the participants of the questionnaire asked them about their age, the options where as follows: 15 and under, 16-20, 21-30 and 31+. Out of the 6 participants, 5 said they where aged between 16-20 and only 1 said that they where aged between 21-30. These results turned out as expected, most of the people that I asked to fill out my survey where my college friends who are all aged between 16-20 therefore these results do not surprise me. However, they do help me if I plan to create a magazine that is to appeal to a target audience aged between 16-20 otherwise known as young adults it means that all the questions answered have been answered by a specific group of people so it is more likely that I can create a magazine that is suitable and appeals most. The 21-30 response is an anomalous result but it still helps with my research.

“What kind of music do you listen to most?”

The third question on my questionnaire was where I began to ask the participants questions about their specific music taste, I opened with the question: “What kind of music do you listen to most?”. There was 6 options on offer: Pop, Rock, classical, indie, R&B and other . Out of the 6 replies, 5 people responded that the music that they listened to most was “Pop”. I already know that my chosen genre of music for my magazine will be pop because this is the genre of music that I know most about. And because this is the genre that the survey participants listen to most then this helps me greatly. The only participant that did not answer “Pop” answered with “R&B” even though this is not my chosen magazine genre this still helps me because it gives me more of an understanding of the type of music that other people listen to and the general likes and dislikes of what they look for in a magazine.

“How often do you buy music magazines?”

In my 4th question, I asked “How often do you buy music magazines?”. This is one of the most important questions in my questionnaire as it will determine my publication pattern for my magazine. Listening to the survey answers show me what kind of pattern will be most suitable for my magazine, and also make it the most sellable. If I choose a publication pattern that is not suitable for the target audience then the magazine will not sell and be as popular, if I over publicise to an audience that only buys magazines once a month, which is what the majority of the participants answers replied with, then the magazine will loose publication profit and will not be as popular. The results of the questionnaire show that mostly people buy their magazines monthly, therefore this will be my chosen publication pattern.

“Do you have a favourite music magazine than you buy?”

Out of all of the responses that I collected from my survey, all of the participants responded that they did not have a favourite music magazine that they buy. Most of the participants also said that their favourite music genre is pop. During my magazine analysis I noticed that there was no big pop magazines on sale aimed at the age group of 16-20 year olds and this is probably why the people in my survey do not have a favourite music magazine that they buy. This question has helped me to understand what age group I am going to aim my magazine at for definite. However because the participants do not have a favourite magazine that they buy, this means that I do not have a magazine to base my own magazine on which means that I am creating a magazine from scratch.

“How much would you be willing to pay for a magazine?”

6 out of 6 of the survey participants responded saying that they would be happy to pay more than £3 on a magazine. If a cover price is higher this means that the publicist can spend more on creating a higher quality magazine, a higher quality magazine will attract more audience and more profit so this is the direction that I need to take. Because all of my survey participants responded saying that they would be willing to pay over £3 on a magazine this shows that I would be able to put a higher cover price on my magazine and not put people off from buying my magazine it also shows that I would be able to make profit.

“What do you prefer your magazines to be like?”

This is an important question in my questionnaire because it helps me when I begin my planning and pitch, especially when planning my flat plan for my final magazine. I asked the survey participants “What do you prefer your magazines to be like?” the options for the participants to chose from where as follows: More text than pictures, more pictures than text and finally a balance of the two. 5 out of the 6 participants answered that they prefer a balance of the two which means that when creating my magazine I shouldn't overrun it with text or pictures and create a balance, however, 1 of the participants answered saying that they prefer more pictures than text, I believe this is because nowadays people like to be able to visualise an article but this also shows that people really don’t like magazines that have more text than pictures so when creating a layout of my magazine I should try and balance the two components.

“What attracts you to a magazine?”

For my 8th question on my survey, I asked the participants “What attracts you to a magazine?”. 4 out of the 6 participants said that the front cover attracted them to a magazine, whilst the other two participants said that the article’s inside the magazine where what attracted them. Because the majority of the participants said that it was the front cover that attracted them, this shows that I have to make my front cover as visually stimulating as possible because if we where to generalise the findings from the survey to the entire population, then overall the public would be attracted to the front cover of a magazine. Also though, the results show that some people are also attracted to a magazine due to the articles inside, this means that when designing my magazine I have to create some articles that are interesting and unique therefore to catch the audience’s eye.

“What is your preferred way of listening to music?”

For the penultimate question on the survey, I asked the question what their favourite way of listening to music is. 6 out of 6 of the participants all replied saying that their preferred way of listening to music was via streaming for example, on their mobiles using spotify or ITunes. This result was expected because the way people listen to music is usually linked with the genre of music they listen to the most and their age group. From the results that I collected in the earlier questions, I expected that the preferred way of listening to music would be streaming because that’s quite typical for the age group of 16-20 because it’s the most popular and easy way of listening to music not only the age group but its also typical when people listen to the genre of pop music the most because it’s the most popular and usually the type of music that is at the top of the charts.

“Do you look for competitions/posters/freebee’s in magazines ?”

My last question on the survey, I asked the participants: “Do you look for competitions/posters/freebee’s in magazines?”. There was a half and half divide of the participants, 3 of them said that they did look for competitions etc. and the other 3 of the participants said that they do not look for any competitions etc. These results show me that extra’s in magazines are not a must when trying to attract the audience to the product. It shows me that if I where going to design a product that included extra’s and freebee’s then it would not make a difference to the audience and the profit that I would make. Unfortunately I did not ask the participants which item they would prefer for example whether they preferred posters to freebee’s, I do regret not asking this question which means that if I am going to include any of these options in my final product I will have to guess which one would appeal more to my target audience.