Target Audience Research: The Questionnaire

After the initial decisions on our documentary had been made, we set about doing our target audience research. We decided that our documentary would be mainly aimed at students and teenagers; whilst also being suitable for other ages. We produced a short questionnaire in order to get an idea of our target audience's knowledge on the subject of takeaways and to discover their preferences for certain things such as font and music for use in our documentary. We then gave out our questionnaire via random sampling to get the most fair and unbiased results possible. This would allow us to be able to more closely match our documentary to what our target audience would want to see in it, to make it more appealing and interesting to them. The statistics that we collected in our questionnaire could also come in helpful later on, when we were producing our documentary and interviewing people (an example would be question three: how often do you have takeaways?).

Our questionnaire went as follows. All of the questions were multiple choice and simply required the person doing the questionnaire to circle or mark off their preferred answer. An evaluation of our results; including all of the different options for each question and the number of times each option was selected; follows underneath.

Question 1: What is your gender?
Question 2: How old are you?
Question 3: How often do you have takeaways?
Question 4: Would you have a takeaway as an actual meal, or just as a quick and easy alternative?
Question 5: Do you find takeaways expensive?
Question 6: Do you prefer to get your takeaway delivered, or to pick it up yourself?
Question 7: What type of takeaway do you prefer?
Question 8: Do special offers with takeaways tempt you?
Question 9: Would you usually eat a takeaway with your family, friends, or on your own?
Question 10: What type of takeaway is your least favourite?
Question 11: Do you tend to order the same meal every time, or be adventurous?
Question 12: What is the maximum amount you would spend on a takeaway?
Question 13: Do you buy a drink with your takeaway?
Question 14: Do you usually order a takeaway on a weekday or at the weekend?
Question 15: Generally, are you satisfied with the takeaways that you get?
Question 16: If you were on your own, would you choose a takeaway over cooking a meal yourself?
Question 17: Do you order a takeaway in the day or at night?
Question 18: How often do you watch television?
Question 19: What would be your preferred font for a documentary?
Question 20: Would you prefer a male or female voice-over in a documentary?
Question 21: What genre of music do you think would most match a light hearted documentary?
Question 22: What would be your preferred colour for the graphics of a documentary?

After collecting all of our data - in total, we handed out forty questionnaires and therefore had forty results for each question - I produced pie charts to help to display and compare our results. I then evaluated the results for each question one by one as well as commenting on how the question was useful and relevant to our target audience research and how the information we collected could come in useful later on in the production of our documentary. I also made note of anything that could've been done better on our questionnaires, things that I would change if I was to hand them out again. I have also included some additional comments from our target audience when possible, as some of the people who did our questionnaire left extra notes next to their questions (which we encouraged people to do as it would most likely prove to be useful information).

Question 1: What is your gender?

This was an important question to ask as we had to make sure that we interviewed a fairly even spread of both males and females to get fair and balanced results from our questionnaire - the results show that we interviewed slightly more females (21 females to 19 males), which is almost a 50/50 spread of males and females: this ensures that our results are fair and that the potential different opinions of males and females was accounted for. For example, if we had interviewed only males certain question results such as 'Question 16: If you were on your own, would you choose a takeaway over cooking a meal yourself?' could've been biased as the majority of males would've presumably chosen 'yes'. As our documentary is aimed at both males and females, it was important that we got the opinions of both genders. The only way this question could've been improved would've been if we had interviewed one more male and one less female to get a perfect 50/50 spread of results between males and females.

Question 2: How old are you?

The results for this question show that the majority of people that we gave the questionnaire to were in our target audience of students and teenagers - the 16-20 category is significantly larger than any other. However, the results also show that we got results from people outside of our target audience as our documentary is not completly aimed at students and teenagers and we want it to be suitable for people older than our specific target audience. As we were giving out the majority of our questionnaires in college and due to our target audience being students, we decided that the lowest age on this question would be 16: this raised one problem that could've been improved on, as my 15 year old brother had no category in which he fell under and as a result was unable to complete the questionnaire properly. If I was to do the questionnaires again, I would add a '15 or below' option to cater for people under our target audience age - we want our documentary to be suitable for people under our specific target audience age as well as below it.

Question 3: How often do you have takeaways?

                                                               

I feel that this question was important as it is an example of a collection of data that we collected that we could potentially use in our documentary. However, I feel that the options could've been better - there are options for 'once every month' and 'once every two weeks' but no option for 'once every three weeks' - if I was to do the questionnaires again, I would incorperate this option (nobody that was gave the questionnaire to asked about a 'once every three weeks' option, but it would've most likely given us a more realistic spread of results overall). We decided that anyone who had a takeaway less frequently than once every three months would come under the 'never' category, as we would've had to add many more uneccesary categories otherwise. Our results show that the majority of our target audience has a takeaway on a regular basis, and this gives us confidence in our target audience's reliability on their knowledge of the topic for both when we will do our interviews and for their knowledge behind the rest of their choices on the questionnaires.       

   

Question 4: Would you have a takeaway as an actual meal, or just as a quick and easy alternative?

I feel that this was an important question to ask as it is probably a question of interest to the viewers of our documentary and our target audience; as a result we will consider it as a potential question to ask and answer in our actual documentary. It also shows that our target audience has mixed views on the question: this happened with many questions, and could prove useful when we are doing our interviews as a mixed spread of opinions will make our documentary less biased.   

Question 5: Do you find takeaways expensive?

Again, we gained an interesting spread of results from our target audience. The majority of people said that 'some' takeaways were expensive, although this is not specific as different people would have different opinions on what they consider 'expensive' to be. To tackle this problem, we decided to include another separate question which asked the public about the prices of takeaways (question twelve). Overall, I think such information gained by asking this question could potential prove useful for when we produce our documentary - if we make it more specific, to make sure it is less biased and more informative and useful.

Question 6: Do you prefer to get your takeaway delivered, or to pick it up yourself?

A simple question, one that we could potentially use in our documentary. The concept of having a takeaway delivered is a dominant theme associated with takeaways, so we felt that it was important to incorporate a question about it in our questionnaire so to cover all of the main topics associated with takeaways; what our target audience wants to see. Due to the majority of people preferring to have their takeaway delivered, we will be sure to highly consider including something on deliveries in our documentary, and we have already began finding potential takeaway companies that we could interview.

Question 7: What type of takeaway do you prefer?

This question was important as it shows what kind of takeaways our target audience are most fond of and interested in. When we do interviews for our documentary, it would certainly be best to focus on Chinese food as 50% of the people we asked chose this option, whilst also touching upon Indian, Italian and American food which took up the bulk of the rest of the votes. It would be unwise to put much focus on Mexican food for example, as not a single person said that they preferred this type of takeaway. We must however be sure to not focus our documentary completely around Chinese food as a result of these votes as our documentary is about takeaways as a whole; not just Chinese food. It is essential that we provide unbiased information and include information on other popular types of takeaways so that our documentary is not misleading. 

Question 8: Do special offers with takeaways tempt you?

Again related to the financial side of takeaways, this question considers special offers such as free drinks when a certain amount is spent, therefore further tempting the customer to spend some extra money. This question was important as special offers are something that people commonly associate with takeaways. This is another question that we could potentially ask people on the street when we are doing our interviews.

Question 9: Would you usually eat a takeaway with your family, friends, or on your own?

This is another set of information that we could include in our documentary somewhere. As with most questions, the person is required to choose what that would 'usually' or 'prefer' to do, as adding more options to cater for every possible answer would've made the results difficult to read and somewhat less useful and less interesting to the target audience. As the majority of people said that they ate a takeaway with their friends or family, it would be a good idea for us to interview people with their friends or family (for example, in pairs) to support this idea of having a takeaway being a social activity.  

Question 10: What type of takeaway is your least favourite?

This question was essentially a mirror of question three (what type of takeaway is your favourite?) but we felt it was still relevant: in question three people were only asked to choose which takeaway they preferred the most - with this question we are also able to see the least popular type of takeaway also. The results in a way mirrored those of question three, with 'Chinese' gaining no votes as the least favourite and supporting the idea that it is the target audience's takeaway of choice. On the other hand, 'Mexican', 'English' and 'Thai' took up the majority of the votes on this question which; like question three; suggests to us that we should make Chinese, Indian, Italian and American food the main focus of our documentary as our questionnaire results show that they are our target audience's favourite types of takeaway.

Question 11: Do you tend to order the same meal every time, or be adventurous?

This is an example of a few questions that we asked the public that are not necessarily related to things that people would particularly think of when the topic of takeaways comes up. As the information that this question provides is not as helpful or interesting to the viewers as other, more obvious questions, it is likely that if we choose this question for inclusion in our documentary we would only ask a few people instead a lot of people for their answer, instead focussing on the questions that will provide us with better and more interesting results. We could potentially include all of the 'smaller' questions such as this in a montage, for example, to provide a lot of information for the viewer without boring them.

Question 12: What is the maximum amount you would spend on a takeaway?

Another question related to finance; we should definitely consider including something about takeaways and finance in our documentary as we have collected much information about the topic. As expected, our target audience of teenagers/students rarely chose higher than the '£16-£25' option, as any more would most likely be deemed too much for a takeaway meal. If I was to do the questionnaire again, I would add another option, in between the '£16-£25' and '£26-£35' options, splitting the two options into three to get a more realistic and reliable view on results. This is another question that we could potentially ask people for inclusion in our documentary.   

Question 13: Do you buy a drink with your takeaway?

Again, this is a question that may not be of particular interest to our target audience, but that we could still include in our documentary briefly; perhaps with just one or two people giving an answer for the question. We could also link this and other questions with other questions to provide a more interesting show of information for our viewers: for example, we could link this question with 'question eight: do special offers with takeaways tempt you?' - they would not be particularly good stand-alone questions to ask but by combining them they could provide us with helpful information to present to our viewers.

Question 14: Do you usually order a takeaway on a weekday or at the weekend?

We felt that this was a simple but essential question to ask our audience. As most people said that they order their takeaways at the weekend, it would be wise for us to go out and interview people in the public at the weekend, as this would have a higher chance of presenting us with opportunities to ask people things like what takeaways they plan to have on that particular day. Public places will most likely be busier with more places open on a weekend, and the results of this question helped to make us see that the desirable time for us to go and interview people would be at a weekend. We could also include the results of this question in our actual documentary. 

Question 15: Generally, are you satisfied with the takeaways that you get?

The results for this question show that generally, our target audience is satisfied with and likes their takeaways. This shows that it is a good topic for a documentary, as something that our target audience likes and is satisfied with would be a good thing to make a documentary about as it will be interesting and relevant for them. This is another question that we could ask people when we go out to interview them.

Question 16: If you were on your own, would you choose a takeaway over cooking a meal yourself?

This was one of the questions that had the biggest mix in results. As a result, we cannot draw any facts from it but it provides us with a mixed argument of unbiased opinions. To keep our documentary interesting for the viewer, it would be better for us to provide them with a variety of different things such as different opinions, and as a result we should consider asking this when we go and do our interviews as much like it did in the questionnaire, it should provide us with a varied outcome. It is essential that we show different opinions on things in our documentary, as we are not biased towards or against takeaways in any way, we are completely neutral so to be as professional as possible.

Question 17: Do you order a takeaway in the day or at night?

This was another question that does not provide information of particular use or interest to the viewer, but could be useful to us and could still be mentioned in our documentary. As most people said that they preferred to have a takeaway in the night, this could work to our advantage when we are interviewing people as we will be doing our interviews in the daytime - as a result we will be able to ask about people's plans for having takeaways later that day. Certain questions such as this one had more obvious answers - we could've probably just assumed that most people order their takeaways in the evening, but we felt it was necessary to check anyway so that we could provide proof to our viewers and make our documentary more professional and reliable. 

Question 18: How often do you watch television?

While most of our questionnaire was about takeaways, we also decided that it was important to ask about the documentary element of what we were to be producing too. The results of this question show that nearly all people that we asked watch television on a regular basis and would likely be interesting in watching our documentary, especially if we attracted them into watching it via inheritance, for example. This question could've been worded slightly better, as 'every couple of days' and 'every few days' are not very specific and difficult to distinguish between - if I were to do the questionnaires again, I would replace these options with things such as 'every two days', 'every three to five days', and 'once a week'.  

Question 19: What would be your preferred font for a documentary?

This was a necessary question in terms of appealing to our target audience. Features such as on-screen graphics and music can easily be added and changed to fit the target audience's preferences. As the majority of people chose the similar basic and cartoon font styles, it is clear that we should definitely use this sort of style in our documentary. We provided people with an example sample of each style of font (seen above) to make sure they knew what they were voting for, and as a result we can trust the results. The 'formal' and 'fancy' font styles did not receive many votes, and as a result we will certainly not use these types of writing in our documentary so to fit the target audience's preferences. 

Question 20: Would you prefer a male or female voice-over in a documentary?

We decided that we would prefer to just have one narrator in our documentary and not multiple narrators, and as a result we saw it fit to just give people a choice between either a male or a female narrator. The 'male' option received the majority of the votes and as a result we will try to use a male narrator over a female one; so to appeal to the target audience's preferences.

Question 21: What genre of music do you think would most match a light hearted documentary?

Again, this was a necessary question for appealing to our audience. The majority of people selected that they would prefer to hear rock or electronic music in our documentary, and as a result we instantly began researching these types of music. We agreed that even before we handed out that questionnaires that what our target audience wanted to see or hear would definitely have a large influence on our decisions, as incorporating our target audience's preferences into our documentary would make it more appealing, interesting, and enjoyable to them.

Question 22: What would be your preferred colour for the graphics of a documentary?

The final question was another that asked for our target audience's opinions on something - in this case, the colour of the on-screen graphics including text. Instead of just asking what the person's favourite colour was, we asked what their preferred colour for a documentary's graphics were as just knowing what their favourite colour was would've provided us with less useful and more random results. Over half of the votes went to black and white, so we will be sure to use black or white (or both) graphics in our documentary whilst certainly avoiding colours such as yellow, which didn't receive any votes.