Research Rationale

For the set brief of music magazines, the specific target audience is 14-18 years olds. This means that I content I produce has to be relevant to this demographic and this can be achieved by including their input in my work. I am currently in Year 11 at secondary school which means I have access to students that are both younger and older than me that fit into this specific demographic. This will allow me to conduct various amounts of research and gather vital information for my music magazine cover and double page spread.

I will conduct different types of research in order to have a wide variety of information to base my work on. In order to do this, I will keep in mind both quantitative and qualitative data to enhance the type of results I receive. Within this broad category of data collection, I can conduct surveys, questionnaires, focus groups, interviews etc depending on which stage of my research I am on and how much information is needed. I will be sure to keep these results in mind when creating my final piece as that is the main purpose of it; for it to appeal to the target audience. However, despite this, I will still need to make my own judgments based on my personal opinions and that can affect the overall look of the magazine too.

In terms of initial ideas, I am planning to conduct surveys, mainly online as that is accessible to a wider variety of people in this age range and will make it easier to group the data results together. As the research progresses, I am also planning to conduct focus groups and interviews in order to get more detailed answers and opinions about music magazines in general. As this is a very broad topic, a variety of opinions will hopefully be entailed from this. All of the information gained from this research will not only allow me to get an overall idea about the interests of this age group, but also allow me to be able to include the specific details in my music magazines so it can appeal to 14-18 year olds.