Research Questionnaire

I conducted a survey of 20 people with different ages, genders, and interests to help me decide which demographic I was going to aim my final piece at.

The first question I asked was regarding their gender. I did this so I could see which gender is most interested in music and music magazines. As you can see 13 females and 7 males took the survey. I should have asked a balanced number of males and females however more females were willing to take the survey.

 The next question I asked was regarding age, I did this so I could find out which age group was most interested in the topic, and then this would also give me an idea of what styles to use when creating the magazine. As you can see the most popular age group was 16-21 year olds, however this result is slightly biased as this is my age group, therefore I know more people. Although from doing other research about music magazines, I have found that this age group is the most popular to aim magazines at; as teenagers and young adults are most interested in keeping up with trends.

Following that I asked people what their favourite genre of music is, and the most popular result was pop music, with 6 out of 20. I think this indicates I should focus on this genre when creating my magazine, also I already know quite a bit about this specific genre, so it would be wise to concentrate on pop.

Next I asked people who their favourite band or artist is, and I got a lot of mixed answers. I mainly asked this question, so that when I am creating the profile of my made up musician to feature in the magazine I will know what kind of personalities people like best, and what kind of music they enjoy.

After that I asked do you read music magazines, and if so which ones? Out of the 20 people surveyed only 3 people read them, 2 males and 1 female. One males and the only female read NME (New Musical Express) and the other male reads Kerrang. The male that reads Kerrang and the female that reads NME are in the 16-21 category; and the male that reads NME is in the 22-30 category. I think this reinforces that I should aim my magazine at 16-21 years olds, as this is the category in which two thirds of the people that read music magazines feature.

I then asked what the reason was behind people not read music magazines, and most occurring answer, with 8 people (6 of which were in the 16-21 category), stated that they were just too expensive. Teenagers don’t have much money, so they would rather save for more worthwhile purchases than spend £2.00-£3.00 a week on music magazines.

The second most popular reason (with 4 out of 17) was that people can easily find the information on the internet, which is a lot more accessible than going out and physically buying the magazine.

The two third most popular reasons (with 3 out of 17 each) were that people would rather buy beauty and lifestyle magazines like Cosmopolitan and Glamour, as they tend to contain much of the same gossip information which is what they are most interested in ( two females from the 16-21 and one female from the 31-40 category). Then the second reason being that none of the magazines appeal to them, they would be happy to read music magazines, they just haven’t found one which they enjoy enough to buy regularly.

The last reason with two people out of seventeen, was that they generally aren't that interested in music, so don’t see the point of buying music magazines. (These two people were in the 51+ category).

The next question I asked was which colours and colour schemes people found most eye catching, and blue turned out to be the most popular colour, with 4 girls and 3 boys answering. The second most popular colour scheme was red and black with 3 boys and 1 girl).

Next I asked which tone people prefer reading, informal or formal, and the majority of the people (14) went with informal. I think most people answered informal because it’s easier to relate to a warm chatty tone than a cold formal tone.

Following this question I asked what attracts people most when looking at a front cover: images, title/logo or cover lines. The most popular response was images, the second was cover lines, and the last title/logo. This shows that I need to have a really eye catching cover image and strong cover lines.

Finally I asked which features people most enjoy reading: interviews, gossip, reviews, or latest updates/news, the main response was interviews, with gossip closely following. I think I will create a question and answer article for my double page spread, as it will be interesting to create, and it’s what people are most interested in reading, as they get to know the celebrity better.

Doing this questionnaire really helped me decide what sort of magazine I am going to create. I now know what demographic I am going to focus on, female 16-21 year olds.