Audience research: planning audience research
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Contents |
OVERVIEW
This article is an extract from A Concise Guide to Researching Audiences. The Guide forms part of the Audience Research Toolkit produced Curtis+Cartwright Consulting Ltd on behalf of the Strategic Content Alliance and links to all the elements in the toolkit can be found at the end of this page.
The article is licenced under the Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
Introduction
Planning audience research should start with the basic question: What do you want to know about your audience? Considering why the knowledge is needed and how it will be put to use is also important. Understanding the audience is not an end in itself, but an integral part of developing and maintaining a successful and sustainable service. Understanding the drivers for, and uses of, audience analysis work will help to ensure that it is aligned with wider service vision and objectives, and may help to obtain buy-in from senior management.
Objectives of audience analysis
The key to good audience analysis is setting out clear objectives and planning appropriate research activities to meet these objectives. There is little point in spending time, money and staff effort collecting data unless it is going to be useful.
Audience analysis can be divided into two broad, interdependent categories: assessment of reach and uptake, and assessment of quality and impact. In planning audience research it is helpful to decide how important each aspect of the analysis is.
Research objectives must be set according to individual service priorities and context. Starting points for identifying broad aims and framing objectives include service development objectives (eg how can we extend the reach of our service?) and questions about the audience and non-users (eg who are our audience? how do they use our service?).
Choosing the methodology
Different approaches to audience analysis
Audience analysis methods can be categorised in different ways, but the distinction between quantitative and qualitative methods is an important one. Quantitative methods (eg surveys, web analytics) are usually more appropriate when statistically valid conclusions need to be drawn about the size, composition and other properties of an audience. Qualitative techniques (eg focus groups, one-to-one interviews) may be more appropriate for exploring attitudes and motivations in depth, discovering patterns of user behaviour and developing a relationship with audience members.
Ethnographic or observational techniques (eg diary studies, accompanied browsing) are increasingly used for studying usability and patterns of service use. Ethnographic data is often very detailed and may include computer collected data which is amenable to statistical analysis as well as a qualitative record of user behaviour.
Representative data
Samples are said to be representative when the composition of the sample audience – with respect to all relevant attributes – is the same as that of the audience as a whole. In some instances it is important to obtain data from a representative sample of the audience (eg to assess the level of uptake, to provide evidence for attainment of key performance indicators). However, representative data is not always vital, particularly when research is preliminary or exploratory. Selecting appropriate methods
The kind of information you want about the audience should help to determine the methods you use, but pragmatic considerations (eg time, money, difficulty of recruiting subjects, staff availability and expertise required) will inevitably play a part. It is common to use a combination of methods in audience analysis projects, for example quantitative surveys are frequently combined with focus group or interview work.
Researching non-usage
Understanding non-use of a service is important: publicly funded services may have a responsibility to service a particular audience (eg senior citizens, ethnic minority communities).
Engaging with non-users may be difficult, time-consuming and potentially expensive, but it should be viewed as a necessary part of audience development work. Building relationships with non-users will pay dividends. Sub-section 3.5 of the full version of the Guide provides more information on the importance of, difficulties with, and possible strategies for researching non-users.
Recruiting subjects for audience research
Recruiting subjects is a perennial problem and the easiest technique may not always be the best, and may lead to an unrepresentative, biased sample. Incentives can be used to aid recruitment, but care needs to be taken to ensure that the incentive is appropriate to the audience you seek to recruit.
Recruitment will be more difficult if a big time commitment is required or the research is going to be inconvenient for subjects. It is also important to bear in mind how your information collection techniques will influence response rates and the robustness of the data collected.
User registration can also be exploited easily by digital services for audience analysis. This allows the service to associate user characteristics with user behaviour. Registered users may be more frequent, more loyal or more committed to the service and therefore more willing to participate in research.
An extension of this idea is to set up research panels – a sample of audience members who have been recruited specifically for the purpose of regularly (ie on an ongoing basis) responding to qualitative and/or quantitative surveys.
Other sources of audience data
Don’t neglect the possibility of increasing your understanding of your audience by looking at research done by other service providers on their audience or by using data from population surveys carried out by market research organisations, government agencies or academic bodies eg the Oxford Internet Institute biennial survey of internet usage.
In addition, exploiting informal knowledge about your audience (eg observations by staff who interact directly with the audience, technical support emails) is a smart thing to do and can be particularly valuable if resources for audience analysis are limited.
Sources of advice and guidance
The Strategic Content Alliance Audience Analysis Toolkit
This toolkit for public sector bodies, commission by the Strategic Content Alliance from Curtis and Cartwright Consulting provides a range of resources about how to undertake successful audience analysis. All may be found on the Audience pages of the Alliance blog. They include the following:
Guides
These offer an in-depth study of how to define your target audience, planning audience research, the various methods which are available for collecting research data, then analysing that data to obtain a useful model of your likely audience and continuing to use audience research to make sure your service responds to their needs effectively.
The Guide to Researching Audiences
A Concise Guide to Researching Audiences
Audience research: a visualisation chart
Case studies
The case studies offer in-depth studies of the audience analysis activities undertaken by ten public sector institutions to inform the service they provide. The case studies cover a diverse range of initiatives including the development of the BBC i-player, the Europeana project, the digitisation of the John Johnson collection and the JISC national e-books observatory project.
The Guide to Researching Audiences: Case Studies
The Guide to Researching Audiences: Illustrative Case Study
Presentations
These presentations are taken from a workshop held in July 2009 presenting the audience analysis work done for the Alliance by Curtis and Cartwright.
Audience research for practitioners
Audience research: why you should be doing it
Briefing papers
The briefing papers provide valuable summaries on audience research for different domains in the public sector, recognising that different audiences have different needs and expectations and summarising the key sources of support for each area.
Audience research for cultural sector practitioners
Audience research for people experimenting with digital media
Briefing paper: Audience research for education and research practitioners
Audience research for library and knowledge practitioners
Audience research for programme, service and research practitioners
Briefing paper: Audience research for senior managers
Related Digipedia articles
Audience analysis and modelling
Audience analysis toolkit
Audience research: analysing audience data
Audience research: applying audience research
Audience research: collecting audience data
Audience research: defining your audience
User needs
User testing
Harvested links to other resources
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