Method: I will ask 50 people the following 8 questions and get them to tick 1 (or more where applicable) of the available boxes to indicate their response. Having done this I will collate the answers from each person onto a tally chart, which will be displayed below.
GCSE Coursework Questionnaire
1.Which of the following age ranges do you fit into?
0 - 18
19 - 29
30 - 45
46 - 59
60+
2. How many television sets are there in your place of residence?
0
1
2
3
4
5+
3.What package of channels do you have on the main television in your house?
Terrestrial
NTL: digital
Telewest digital
Sky digital
Satellite
4.Approximately how many hours of television do you watch in an average day?
0 - 1
1 - 2
2 - 3
3 - 4
4 - 5
5+
5.What type of program do you watch most often?
News
Drama
Comedy
Sport
Film
Hobbies
6.Which channel do you watch most often?
BBC 1
BBC 2
ITV
Channel 4
Five
Other (please state) _____________
7.Which soaps do you watch on a regular basis?
Eastenders
Coronation Street
Brookside
Emmerdale
Other (please state) _____________
None
8.Which other media sources do you use on a regular basis?
Newspapers
Radio
Internet
Other (please state) _____________
None
Results:
* Denotes question can require more than one answer
1.
As the above donut chart shows the split of ages of the 50 people questioned was fairly even which should make for good general results with no bias due to age.
2.
This bar chart shows the most common (modal) number of televisions in a house to be 2. It also shows that none of the people asked (who were not beforehand asked if they own a television) did not have a television in their place of residence, and only 3 of the people asked had only 1 television in their house. This proves correct my hypothesis that the majority of people asked in the survey would live in a house with more than 1 television. I was though surprised at the number of people who had 5 or more televisions in their house being 14. This may well be members of a large family with young children who wish to watch different things to their parents.
3.
The chart above shows the percentage of people questioned who had each of the packages of channels that are currently available. As is shown on the chart 46% of the people questioned had just the terrestrial channels (BBC 1&2, ITV, Channel 4 and Five) on the main television in their household. My hypothesis for this question was accurate that the most people would have only terrestrial channels, but I had expected a more even spread amongst the subscription packages, rather than telewest and Sky getting many more than NTL and satellite.
4.
This pie chart shows the percentage of people who watch television for each range of time. 2 – 3 hours of television was watched by the largest number of people on an average day which considering that everyone has to sleep and eat is rather a large chunk of life taken up watching television. This shows the large effect that television has on the life of many, to take up so much of their time. My hypothesis for this question was correct in essence assuming that many people didn’t watch 2 hours of television a day and put this into the 2 – 3 hours range. I was intrigued that 64% of the people asked watched less than 3 hours of television considering the variety that is now available but as there was such a wide spread on the ages of the people surveyed this cannot be put down to a particular age range having less time available than others.
5.
The above chart shows that the most popular types of program are the news, drama and comedy programs. It is no surprise that many people watch the news often as it is always changing and is an easy way to keep up with current affairs (also it is usually a drama in itself). Drama and comedy are watched by many as these are generally the most entertaining genres of programming and are shown mostly at prime times (7 – 9pm) in order to draw large audiences. These types of programs have become so popular that some subscription packages now include channels dedicated to these programs where they can be watched at any time. My prediction was unsure as to which types of program would be watched most often as I thought there would be a wide spread, and to an extent there was but 3 program types had many more than the other 3 which was unexpected.
6.
The pyramid graph above shows the percentage of people who watch each channel most often. It is no surprise to see that BBC 1 is watched the most by many people as it is the oldest television channel and has the clearest signal so can be picked up by most receivers. Also it is a channel that has a wide variety of programs so appeals to a large crowd. ITV is similar in its approach to BBC 1 so has the next largest amount of loyal viewers. As was predicted the 5 terrestrial channels were viewed often by a large majority of people, as these are less specialised than subscription channels and are available to most people. Some of the channels that were specified by people selecting other were Sky One, Paramount Comedy, Sky Sports, MTV and Trouble. These channels are mostly aimed at a particular target audience and show a particular type of program.
7.
This bar chart shows that the largest number of people did not watch a soap on a regular basis, which was predicted in my hypothesis. Figures printed in national press have shown soap operas to be the programs watched by the most people, with Eastenders on BBC 1 at prime time during the week and Coronation Street on ITV at a similar time being the two most popular soaps on television. In an average week either one of these programs can attract over 15million viewers. The two programs however did not come close in my survey as Eastenders had more than double that of Coronation Street.
8.
This chart shows the amount of people who use 3 other main sources of media. The most popular of these was radio, the sound only medium that was invented before the television for the same purposes. The internet being the newest of media sources has a few less regular users but it is likely that over time this will become much more popular than radio and newspapers as it combines text, sound and picture. My hypothesis estimated that on average each person would use at least 1 other media source and this estimation was correct but I had thought that more people would use the internet regularly than radio or newspapers.
Evaluation: I feel that my investigation into television viewing habits was successful as I was able to draw conclusions as to the subjects I wished to find out about. The survey itself was well presented and easy to understand so that people could understand what they were being asked. I felt the questions I asked got the correct response and were not too difficult to answer. The majority of my predictions were correct in the main, with some not being particularly specific. If I was to carry out this investigation again I would make sure that people gave only one answer to each question as this becomes confusing when trying to collate the answers and make suitable graphs for the information. Also I would carry it out on a larger scale, in order to make more accurate results and draw more accurate conclusions. But this would need more time and preparation in order to carry it out. In the main the investigation was a success.
