Audience Feedback
Techniques
A2 Advanced Portfolio
Rhys Ward
Qualitative and Quantitative Data
 When collecting audience feedback, there needs to be elements of quantitative
and qualitative data to ensure that the feedback you receive is reliable, useful and
honest.
 Qualitative data is open, opinionated and comment based feedback. This style of
data cannot be measured. You can get this feedback by asking the audience open
questions because you are therefore asking for them to give you their response
and what they personally think about the subject they’re being asked about.
 Quantitative data, on the other hand, is data and fact based feedback. You should
be able to measure this style of data. This information can be gained by asking
your audience more closed questions; you are receiving fixed and factual answers.
Techniques
 There are number of different techniques that I could use to collect audience feedback
throughout my coursework.
 I have decided to compare the different techniques I am thinking of to see which ones
would be best for certain pieces of feedback.
 As an example, it may be better to conduct a video/audio recording to see how an
individual or group would react to a certain video rather than giving them a quick
questionnaire to fill out after they’ve seen it. This is because with questionnaires, the
answers can easily be dishonest and not exactly what you’re looking for. However with
the recordings you can really get the answers you’re looking for and have a true
response from the participant.
 In the following slides I am going to give a description and outline the
advantages/disadvantages of each, so that I will then be able to see which would be
best for the different pieces of feedback when I come to them. I’ll be able to use this
presentation as a plan and continually come back to it when conducting audience
feedback.
Social Media Comments
 When using social media to receive audience feedback you are able to reach a larger
audience. There are now two billion active users on Facebook, Twitter has over 300
million, and Instagram has 800 million active users – just to name a few. As a result you
could theoretically create an account on a couple of these social media platforms and
be able to reach millions of users.
 Secondly, these platforms are free and easy to set up. None of the major social media
platforms mentioned above have any kind of set-up fees. Therefore the only investment
that would have to be made is the time it would take to actually retrieve the feedback
from start to finish.
 Within these platforms there are ways of sharing, meaning your method of audience
feedback could get round quicker. Facebook has the share option, Twitter has the re-
tweet function and there is an application that allows you to ‘re-post’ on Instagram.
 On the other hand, social media has its downsides. Everyone on the platforms can give
their opinions and feedback, meaning that is may not 100% be appropriate or suitable.
 Additionally, the time it takes to maintain the posts, ensure each piece of feedback is
relevant and then to analyse it can be quite consuming.
Questionnaires
 Questionnaires and surveys are two different things that are often confused. A
questionnaire is the tool that is used to collect data, and often involves asking someone
to answer several questions. Whereas a survey is the actual physical process of
gathering the data, which would be done in a number of different ways including
questionnaires.
 Questionnaires have a number of good points. Being one of the most affordable and
low cost options for data collection, this is more so when they’re online. As the only
investment is really the time taken to produce and manage the questionnaire, you can
see as to why it is such a low cost and popular method of gathering audience feedback.
 They’re also practical because multiple different groups of people can be targeted
easily. They can be either sent out via email, social media or even printed to access all
different groups of people. For example, sending out via social media would attract a
younger audience to answer and printing off is likely to attract an older generation as
they are more likely to not use social media. You can also manage the questions well, by
choosing whether you’d like open or closed questions, multiple choice, dates and times,
etc. There is a variety of practical methods of using the questionnaire to get the answers
you would like to receive to aid you in the planning of a project.
https://surveyanyplace.com/questionnaire-pros-and-cons/
Questionnaires
 How quick and easy questionnaires are to produce and retrieve answers for is
another appealing element of using a questionnaire for audience feedback. Online
and mobile tools allow for you to access your results within hours, obviously
dependant on the questionnaire being completed by a good amount of users.
Basically you do not need to wait for third parties to deliver the results of your
questionnaire, you can access the data yourself within hours!
 In terms of audience, using a questionnaire can reach a large amount of people.
For the low-cost and practicality of the questionnaire, this is great value.
 Also, it is not difficult to work a questionnaire either online or a paper version. Built
in tools allow for you to easily analyse your results in chart and graph formats.
 User anonymity allows users to hide their identify when completing questions as
names, etc. are not at all required. This makes people more likely to want to
complete questionnaires as they can answer honestly without criticism.
Questionnaires
 On the other hand there are a number of drawbacks:
 Although the element of anonymity is likely to make users answer honestly,
dishonest answers are a threat. Respondents may not answer honestly and
truthfully with their own opinions due to a number of factors, such as bias, social
acceptance and attempting to protect their privacy.
 Respondents may rush through the questionnaire, therefore affecting the validity
of the questionnaire’s results. Questions may not be fully read, skipped or
answered too quickly for them to be answered validly. The wording of a questions
may cause interpretation or understanding issues, which would additionally cause
for data validity concerns.
 Face to face communications allow for the respondents to portray their own
emotions towards a certain topic, however this is not possible when it is done
online or via paper. This can affect the results as the person analysing the results
may not understand the response a person is giving.
Interviews
 Interviews involve face to face communication, often where questions are involved.
Interviews are useful tools for gathering an audience’s feedback from an in depth
point of view because you are able to dig deeper when asking questions and also
receiving the answers. You can also get a feel for the participants emotions and
feelings towards a certain topic when interviewing.
 As the person is there face to face they’re more inclined to answer the questions,
which differs to questionnaires as the user can easily skip questions without
challenge. These responses given can also be accurately used within research and
planning because usually the interview is recorded for reference purposes. Another
advantage of single person interviews are that the person being interviewed are
not going to be influenced by other people’s responses, emotions and/or opinions.
Interviews
 The main disadvantages of interviews are that they can quite time consuming. They
have to be organised in the first place, the questions and topics have to be created,
the actual interview has to take place, and then the results have to be analysed and
reported upon. When comparing to a questionnaire or even reviewing social media
comments, an interview takes a lot more time, however may give more specific and
detailed answers in return. They can additionally be quite costly as well. All of the
resources that have to be taken in to account here. There are the financial costs,
but in addition there are the time costs and effort that all counts as well. The final
main disadvantage is that different interviewers & analysers are going to interpret
answers differently. This means that someone might answer the same question but
with different people and their answer be reported back as two totally different
concepts. This ambiguity is a major concern for everyone involved, because the
organisation conducting the interview are not going to have honest/reliable results
and the respondent has been misinterpreted.
Existing Comments & Ratings
 Using existing comments and ratings gives you the ability to see how a mass audience
sees something. For example, sites such as rottentomatoes.com and IMDB allow for
anybody to sign up and review films. This therefore gives people interested in these
films, or maybe even an entire genre, a clear representation of the audience’s views and
opinions on it. This could be useful to a film distribution company because when they’re
looking to invest they will be able to match the genre of the potential film and the
online existing comments and ratings to figure out whether it was be feasible to create
and more importantly profitable.
 For music videos specifically there is no such platforms to see existing comments and
ratings. However, YouTube is a platform that the majority of music videos are watched
on and it offers a comments section, a view count and a like/dislike function. This
therefore offers officials within the music video industry with an insight to different
music videos and how successful they are in the eyes of the audience.
 They are beneficial mainly because it gives an overall view from the mass audience. A
major drawback however is that you cannot identify these people in reality and they
may not be the audience you want feedback from. This therefore tests the reliability and
validity of the data you will be gathering.

Audience Feedback Techniques

  • 1.
  • 2.
    Qualitative and QuantitativeData  When collecting audience feedback, there needs to be elements of quantitative and qualitative data to ensure that the feedback you receive is reliable, useful and honest.  Qualitative data is open, opinionated and comment based feedback. This style of data cannot be measured. You can get this feedback by asking the audience open questions because you are therefore asking for them to give you their response and what they personally think about the subject they’re being asked about.  Quantitative data, on the other hand, is data and fact based feedback. You should be able to measure this style of data. This information can be gained by asking your audience more closed questions; you are receiving fixed and factual answers.
  • 3.
    Techniques  There arenumber of different techniques that I could use to collect audience feedback throughout my coursework.  I have decided to compare the different techniques I am thinking of to see which ones would be best for certain pieces of feedback.  As an example, it may be better to conduct a video/audio recording to see how an individual or group would react to a certain video rather than giving them a quick questionnaire to fill out after they’ve seen it. This is because with questionnaires, the answers can easily be dishonest and not exactly what you’re looking for. However with the recordings you can really get the answers you’re looking for and have a true response from the participant.  In the following slides I am going to give a description and outline the advantages/disadvantages of each, so that I will then be able to see which would be best for the different pieces of feedback when I come to them. I’ll be able to use this presentation as a plan and continually come back to it when conducting audience feedback.
  • 4.
    Social Media Comments When using social media to receive audience feedback you are able to reach a larger audience. There are now two billion active users on Facebook, Twitter has over 300 million, and Instagram has 800 million active users – just to name a few. As a result you could theoretically create an account on a couple of these social media platforms and be able to reach millions of users.  Secondly, these platforms are free and easy to set up. None of the major social media platforms mentioned above have any kind of set-up fees. Therefore the only investment that would have to be made is the time it would take to actually retrieve the feedback from start to finish.  Within these platforms there are ways of sharing, meaning your method of audience feedback could get round quicker. Facebook has the share option, Twitter has the re- tweet function and there is an application that allows you to ‘re-post’ on Instagram.  On the other hand, social media has its downsides. Everyone on the platforms can give their opinions and feedback, meaning that is may not 100% be appropriate or suitable.  Additionally, the time it takes to maintain the posts, ensure each piece of feedback is relevant and then to analyse it can be quite consuming.
  • 5.
    Questionnaires  Questionnaires andsurveys are two different things that are often confused. A questionnaire is the tool that is used to collect data, and often involves asking someone to answer several questions. Whereas a survey is the actual physical process of gathering the data, which would be done in a number of different ways including questionnaires.  Questionnaires have a number of good points. Being one of the most affordable and low cost options for data collection, this is more so when they’re online. As the only investment is really the time taken to produce and manage the questionnaire, you can see as to why it is such a low cost and popular method of gathering audience feedback.  They’re also practical because multiple different groups of people can be targeted easily. They can be either sent out via email, social media or even printed to access all different groups of people. For example, sending out via social media would attract a younger audience to answer and printing off is likely to attract an older generation as they are more likely to not use social media. You can also manage the questions well, by choosing whether you’d like open or closed questions, multiple choice, dates and times, etc. There is a variety of practical methods of using the questionnaire to get the answers you would like to receive to aid you in the planning of a project. https://surveyanyplace.com/questionnaire-pros-and-cons/
  • 6.
    Questionnaires  How quickand easy questionnaires are to produce and retrieve answers for is another appealing element of using a questionnaire for audience feedback. Online and mobile tools allow for you to access your results within hours, obviously dependant on the questionnaire being completed by a good amount of users. Basically you do not need to wait for third parties to deliver the results of your questionnaire, you can access the data yourself within hours!  In terms of audience, using a questionnaire can reach a large amount of people. For the low-cost and practicality of the questionnaire, this is great value.  Also, it is not difficult to work a questionnaire either online or a paper version. Built in tools allow for you to easily analyse your results in chart and graph formats.  User anonymity allows users to hide their identify when completing questions as names, etc. are not at all required. This makes people more likely to want to complete questionnaires as they can answer honestly without criticism.
  • 7.
    Questionnaires  On theother hand there are a number of drawbacks:  Although the element of anonymity is likely to make users answer honestly, dishonest answers are a threat. Respondents may not answer honestly and truthfully with their own opinions due to a number of factors, such as bias, social acceptance and attempting to protect their privacy.  Respondents may rush through the questionnaire, therefore affecting the validity of the questionnaire’s results. Questions may not be fully read, skipped or answered too quickly for them to be answered validly. The wording of a questions may cause interpretation or understanding issues, which would additionally cause for data validity concerns.  Face to face communications allow for the respondents to portray their own emotions towards a certain topic, however this is not possible when it is done online or via paper. This can affect the results as the person analysing the results may not understand the response a person is giving.
  • 8.
    Interviews  Interviews involveface to face communication, often where questions are involved. Interviews are useful tools for gathering an audience’s feedback from an in depth point of view because you are able to dig deeper when asking questions and also receiving the answers. You can also get a feel for the participants emotions and feelings towards a certain topic when interviewing.  As the person is there face to face they’re more inclined to answer the questions, which differs to questionnaires as the user can easily skip questions without challenge. These responses given can also be accurately used within research and planning because usually the interview is recorded for reference purposes. Another advantage of single person interviews are that the person being interviewed are not going to be influenced by other people’s responses, emotions and/or opinions.
  • 9.
    Interviews  The maindisadvantages of interviews are that they can quite time consuming. They have to be organised in the first place, the questions and topics have to be created, the actual interview has to take place, and then the results have to be analysed and reported upon. When comparing to a questionnaire or even reviewing social media comments, an interview takes a lot more time, however may give more specific and detailed answers in return. They can additionally be quite costly as well. All of the resources that have to be taken in to account here. There are the financial costs, but in addition there are the time costs and effort that all counts as well. The final main disadvantage is that different interviewers & analysers are going to interpret answers differently. This means that someone might answer the same question but with different people and their answer be reported back as two totally different concepts. This ambiguity is a major concern for everyone involved, because the organisation conducting the interview are not going to have honest/reliable results and the respondent has been misinterpreted.
  • 10.
    Existing Comments &Ratings  Using existing comments and ratings gives you the ability to see how a mass audience sees something. For example, sites such as rottentomatoes.com and IMDB allow for anybody to sign up and review films. This therefore gives people interested in these films, or maybe even an entire genre, a clear representation of the audience’s views and opinions on it. This could be useful to a film distribution company because when they’re looking to invest they will be able to match the genre of the potential film and the online existing comments and ratings to figure out whether it was be feasible to create and more importantly profitable.  For music videos specifically there is no such platforms to see existing comments and ratings. However, YouTube is a platform that the majority of music videos are watched on and it offers a comments section, a view count and a like/dislike function. This therefore offers officials within the music video industry with an insight to different music videos and how successful they are in the eyes of the audience.  They are beneficial mainly because it gives an overall view from the mass audience. A major drawback however is that you cannot identify these people in reality and they may not be the audience you want feedback from. This therefore tests the reliability and validity of the data you will be gathering.