Research methods

There are four types of research methods, these are:

• Primary
• Secondary
• Qualatative
• Quantitative

Primary research is first hand research that is carried out by yourself. This can be thorough a questionnaire, surveys, interviews, focus groups, phone calls, emails letters and textual analysis.

Secondary research is research you collect yourself from an outside source. This can be information researched by the Internet, using search engines, e.g. Google, yahoo, Bing. You can also collect research form industry websites, e.g. BBC, or even social networks like Facebook or Twitter for people's opinions and views. It can also be information gathered from books, as well as newspapers, articles. magazines and journals.

Qualatative research is to do with words, opinions and feelings in people's response. This can be collected through a questionnaire, which can be both positive and negative. Questionnaires can be a positive research method as, you can ask a wide range of people and build up a lot of information from a large amount of participants. However this can also be a negative, as people often lie on questionnaires making them somewhat unreliable, the answers they give might be blunt and not very useful, you can't gather the same amount of in depth, detailed information, some questions on a questionnaire can be influential and lead the participant to an answer they wouldn't normally provide.

Quantitative research is to do with opinions, words and feelings in people's response. An example of quantitative research is focus groups. Focus groups again can be both positive and negative. It is a positive because you can get a range of different views and ideas from a varied age range. It can be a negative because people can get intimidated within the group and be pushed aside, forcing them to agree with everyone else, rather than giving their own views and opinions.