Primary research is research that you have carried out yourself. This can be material that you have generated (e.g. asking a question on a forum that other users have responded to) or uninterpreted material that you have analysed (e.g. using Google to find reviews on a film about female strippers and counting up how many of the positive reviews were written by male reviewers as opposed to female ones).
Examples of sources of primary research include:
- questionnaires
- emails
- interviews
- forum posts
- focus groups
- surveys
- audience testing
- analysis
You will need to analyse your data (e.g. completed questionnaires) and summarise your findings.
- Explain the tests you performed (and why you did them - aims and objectives).
- Describe the demographic make-up of your test group.
- Explain how you gathered the data.
- What were your results? (Look to highlight interesting results, important trends and differences/comparisons.)
- Show any negative results too, and try to explain them.
- Indicate what results are significant in terms of the your topic.
- Draw any immediate conclusions.
The quantitative data (fixed response) can be presented in the form of tables, graphs and diagrams, but you also need to use words to guide readers through your data.
The analysis of qualitative data cannot be neatly presented in tables and figures, as quantitative results can be. It must all be expressed in words and you must guide your reader.
