Critical Research Studies

 You will need to choose one of the

following areas:
 Women and Film
 Popular Music and Youth Culture
 Community Radio
 Children and Television
 Crime and the Media
 Critical Research Studies
 Once you have chosen your topic
area, you will need to focus your
study on a particular issue or
question.
 This involves creating a relevant
hypothesis
 This will probably be most useful if it
is in the form of the question
 Some Examples
 Women and Film
 How have representations of female
crimefighters in film changed over the last 50
years?
 In what ways do female audiences respond to
images of the male body in modern films?
 Popular Music and Youth Culture
 How does death metal music represent the
values and beliefs of its audiences?
 In what ways do teenage audiences define
themselves by the music they listen to?
 Some Examples

 Community Radio
 In what ways can a community radio station
define the values of the audiences which listen
to it?
 Children and Television
 In what ways is the behaviour of young
children affected by the television they watch?
 Do advertisers exploit children in order to sell
their products on television?
 Some Examples
 Crime and the Media
 What is the relationship between crime
reporting and representations of race in the
tabloid press?
 Why are TV crime dramas so popular with
British audiences?
 Critical Research Studies
 You are now ready to begin
thinking about research
sources
 The more that you can get
done at an early stage of
the study, the easier you
will find this paper overall.

Remember:
Critical Research is like a
shark.
As soon as it stops moving, it
will die!
 Critical Research Studies
 How do I carry out my research?
 A huge variety of choices is available
 The best research offers a balance of

sources, methods and data

 Generally, you need to show evidence of

both primary and secondary research in
your exam
 Primary Research
 This term refers to any research in
which you, as researcher, generate
your own data or information.

 There are various forms of primary

research which you might want to
carry out.
 Techniques of Primary
Research
 Questionnaires
 Structured interviews
 Unstructured interviews
 Focus groups
 Participant observational studies
 Non-participant observational studies
 Content analysis
 Textual analysis
 Experiments
 Secondary Research
 This term refers to any research in
which you, as researcher, collect
data that already exists in some
shape or form

 There are various forms of secondary

sources which you might want to
look at in order to collect your data.
 Sources of Secondary
Research
 Books and textbooks
 Journals and magazines
 Academic papers
 The internet
 ‘Official’ reports and statistics
 ‘Unofficial’ reports and statistics
 Types of Data
 You will find that the research that
you carry out will produce, broadly,
two types of data:

3. Quantitative data - data that is

largely numerical in form
4. Qualitative data - data consisting of
words/meaning/interpretations