Evaluation on Research 

For the research unit, I had to look into several research methods and explore and establish their strengths and weaknesses and then apply them to my own research, specifically to the music video unit. 

Firstly, I looked into questionnaires. Upon basic research, I learned that there were two types of questionnaires open and closed. I had previously thought they were the same thing and hadn't realised they were divided into their own subcategories. This information proved to be very useful as after evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of both questionnaire types, I decided that for my own music video questionnaire, a closed questionnaire would be more efficient. I came to this decision because of the fact it saved time not only for me making it but also for individuals taking the questionnaire as people only took the questionnaire due to the fact it only took two minutes to complete in contrast to an open questionnaire where they would have to put a lot of thought and consideration into their responses. However, this factor specifically, did make analysing some of the responses harder, for example, I asked a question about 'how individuals like to feel after watching a music video,' listing a few emotions and an 'other option'. I was then surprised to see that most people put other meanings that could only rule out what people didn't feel making it harder for me to work out what emotional response I should've been aiming for spectators to have after viewing my video. This is where an open questionnaire would've been very effective as people would've been able to state their specific preferred reaction, giving me a more reliable statistic for this question. A positive to this question being in the closed questionnaire style rather than an open questionnaire was that it allowed me to be able to say that due to the fact that most people selected others, I was able to make the claim that it didn't really matter how people would feel after viewing my music video because everyone responds differently and take their own individual reading from it, which also kept in theme with my music video about not conforming to the systematic and repetitive, copy and paste ways of society. I did however use my found knowledge on questionnaires to have the first question as an open one and not have all ten questions as closed questionnaires. I think the results from this question made me feel justified in my decision to keep the rest of the questionnaire a closed rather than open one due to the fact it seemed like a lot of people didn't put a lot of thought into their answers to me asking their 'favourite and least favourite music videos' as some people just put generically hated songs for their least favourite and it seemed like people didn't want to put a lot of thought into their answer. This made my results less specific which goes against the whole point of using an open questionnaire style. So overall I was quite happy with my research on questionnaires and felt it made creating my own questionnaire less tedious. Although I do wish I had maybe done more extensive research into example questions and responses of these questionnaires so a had a better understanding of the listed pros and cons as I feel this would've helped me avoid the minor issues I had with my music video questionnaire.

I also did research into focus groups. This newfound information from my research on focus groups proved to be helpful when getting feedback on my music video especially as in contrast to questionnaires, I didn't really have any prior knowledge on focus groups. As it's a method of qualitative research, meaning it could be done informally, allowed very truthful and reliable responses. For example, when I showed my mood board along with my initial ideas for my music video to some of my class members. I asked for feedback, criticism and further development on them. This information gave me more ideas and because of this, it proved to be really helpful. In contrast to a questionnaire, the responses from my focus group research were more specified to my video and helped me a lot more with the details of my music video as the people I got feedback from were more niche than the people answering my questionnaire as my focus group was aimed at people who were also making music videos and had a more critical and analytical perspective when listening to my ideas and commenting on them. Due to the fact I found the focus groups really effective, I wish I had done more focus group interviews and recorded them or made notes like when showing people my first cut from a portion of my music video. I feel like this would've been helpful to constantly be looking back on and would've helped justify some of my decisions.

Overall, I feel that the research went quite well as the information I had gathered really helped me when identifying choices I needed to make for my music video, which I did through the use of questionnaires and focus groups which wouldn't have been done nearly as thoroughly without my initial research. As I have previously explained, I feel that the only regret is that I didn't do further more detailed research so I had more sources to justify my decisions. However, I think that the research I did do was still of great help and played a significant role in the final product of my music video.