My Documentary Questionnaire results for A2 Media Coursework

1. By Roy Evans

2. About the Questionnaire
The Questionnaire has 9 questions.
The Questionnaire was handed out to 30
independent people.
The Questionnaire can also be found at the
website:
www.suveymonkey.com/s/LVKPB6N

3. 1&2) What gender & age are you?

4. 3) What do you expect most
from a documentary?

5. 4) What is the main reason for you
to watch a documentary?

6. 5) What Age Category would you expect to
watch a documentary about a school?

7. What does this tell me about
my target audience?
The final graph tells me that the majority expect my target
audience to be around the school aged and early
adulthood, so around 13 – 25.
However, male’s in particular felt that the an older target
audience would be the viewers of a school documentary,
around the ages of 26 – 49. Could this possible show a
variation from gender in contrast to age?
By this, the underlying question is, does gender impact my
target audience alongside age?. Is my target audience
younger females and older males?

8. My Solution?
My first thought was how can I aim a documentary at
different genders and different age groups. But then it
dawned on me, I hadn’t asked what gender would
people most expect to watch a documentary about a
school.
This leads me to believe that my stereotypic target
audience is females between the ages of 14 and 30.
Whilst this is a broad range, the aim of a
documentary is to educate, therefore it is much easier
to target a broader target audience than it would be in
a different media product like a film for example.

9. What do I want or think my
target audience to be?
 Whilst I agree with the fact that females between 14 – 30 would be my
stereotypical target audience, backed up by my questionnaires
suggesting that females watch documentaries ‘to learn something’, to
begin with I decided I would like to try and break conventions slightly
and appeal slightly more to a male market.
 Whilst males also suggested they watch documentaries ‘to learn
something’ there seemed to be more of an edge towards
‘entertainment’ for males, which is not the road I wanted to head
down with my documentary. Therefore this shows me that should I
break conventions, I would have to adapt my documentary in ways
that I didn’t want to go.

10. Overall?
Overall, this makes me reconsider my idea to
break conventions and try to appeal to a male
market as well as female, and just focus on
producing a factual 5 minute documentary that
may or may not appeal to a wider range of
audience than my ‘stereotypical target audience’.