Can Tho University (Vietnam) students on their way to conduct a farmer survey in Vinh Thanh district

Next week, our DC 132 class will design their own audience research projects. Their assignment over the weekend is to think about a topic that they are passionate about. Here are some ideas I got from the class on possible audience analysis topics:

• Students’ feedback to the university student publication - frequency of issue, editorial staff, content (writing style, choice of topics, grammar, etc.), page size, cover design, etc.

• Listenership and impact of the university’s rural educational radio station – who listens to it, how many listen to it, audience demographics, what is done with information received, adoption and adaptation, and impact — changes in household and farm enterprises, livelihood, productivity and profitability

• Internet usage of university students

• Students’ information acquisition patterns – information sources for school work (library, Internet, both), Internet usage – frequency, number of hours spent, where Internet use done, type of Internet activities engaged in (email, blogging, seeking general information, surfing, chat rooms, websites frequently visited, etc.)

• Gender differences in news media exposure

• Current news awareness and news media exposure of high school and college students

• Viewership of “fantaseryes” among grade school children

What is audience research?
Audience research is any communication research that is conducted on specific audience segments to gather information about their demographics, media habits, needs, attitudes, knowledge, interests, preferences, or behaviors.

Why conduct audience research?
Audience research is undertaken at the initial stages of a communication campaign to understand the intended audience’s needs, knowledge, attitudes and behaviors, barriers or constraints to a recommended basket of options. At this stage, information is also obtained on audience preferences for communication channels or formats and usage frequency and schedule. Audience analysis enables the communication planner to determine the types of incentives and barriers that the audience perceive to exist, their most preferred channels or formats, the most credible sources, segment an audience into groups with similar information needs and preferences, select the objectives most appropriate for an audience, select the best media channels to reach an audience, develop concepts or messages to achieve the communications objectives and plan for communication impact assessment.

Audience research methods
Also referred to as market research or formative research, audience analysis involves the use of focus group discussions, literature and document reviews, community consultations, rapid rural appraisals, scoping studies, and knowledge-attitude-practice (KAP) surveys. While focusing on the key issues to be addressed by the communication program, audience research variables largely include population size and distribution, language spoken, literacy and educational levels, socio-cultural factors, economic indicators, health indicators, psychographics, and other variables.

How to conduct an audience analysis survey

Because the cost of implementing surveys is often high, it is important that they are planned and conducted with utmost care. Audience analysis surveys follow the standard survey methodology described in social science textbooks. A summary of these steps is presented below:

1. Identify the problem or issues to be addressed by the survey.

2. Formulate survey objectives

The survey objective might be to determine the media habits and perceptions, knowledge, and practices in environmental protection of farm families. Drawing up a list of variables that will help find answers to the survey objectives could put the researcher on the right track in designing the questions to ask in the survey. Specific questions that are aimed at various aspects of the problem could help clarify the research problem.

3. Develop the survey instrument

In a survey, a popular instrument used for data collection is a questionnaire which contains a series of questions designed to gather information from the respondents. The survey questionnaire may contain questions on the demographics of respondents, their communication access and exposure, knowledge, attitude and practice questions on an identified problem, among others.

4. Pretest the questionnaire

When the survey questionnaire has been compiled, it needs to be translated into the local language and pretested before being reproduced and used in the field. Pretesting involves interviewing a small group of respondents who are similar to the intended target group to determine their reactions to the prototype questionnaire. The pretest is a screening of the questionnaire to see how it works and whether changes are necessary before the start of the actual survey.

5. Choose sample respondents

An important concern in survey research is deciding how many and which respondents should be included. An audience analysis survey uses standard social science methods in selecting the sample, e.g., multi-stage sampling, stratified sampling, systematic sampling, cluster sampling, and simple random sampling. The choice of sampling technique depends primarily on the nature of the problem, the cost and time factors involved, and the desired precision or reliability of the results. It is recommended that the sample be drawn from a cross-section of the sampling population so that this group can be said to represent the larger population.

6. Implement the field survey

When the questionnaire has been pretested, finalized and reproduced, the next step is to implement the field survey. Before they are fielded, interviewers are oriented on the purpose of the survey and trained on interviewing skills and how to conduct the interviews. Guided by the sampling plan and respondent list, the interviewers locate the respondents, conduct the interviews, and check the completed questionnaires after the interview.

7. Coding and analyzing survey data

Once the completed questionnaires have been edited, the data need to be analyzed. Depending on the main objective of the survey, this analysis phase can be relatively simple – such as manually determining the % of respondents giving specific answers or listing the various ways in which farmers said they might utilize a new practice. For more complex surveys, particularly where the aim is to predict for the entire population from the results of the sample population, it is best that the data are encoded, processed and analyzed using a statistical package. Ease of use, power, and cost are some of the important considerations in the choice of computer software for data analysis.

8. Write the survey report

The analyzed data are interpreted and the results of this interpretative process are reported. The purpose of a survey report is to tell the readers the research problem, data collection methods used, findings, and conclusions. Like other research reports, the survey report should consist of an executive summary, introduction, description of the methods, results and discussion, and conclusions.

For a sample audience analysis report, click here …