Research Methods

To create my music magazine I will need to use research methods for gathering the information needed so that the magazine appeals to the target audience.

The main research methods are:
Primary - this is research you carry out personally
Secondary - research you gather from other people
Quantitative - this is when you carry out questionnaires/surveys and you look for a pattern or trend within peoples answers/responses.
Qualitative - this method investigates the why and how of decision making and people's opinions, ideas and thoughts and feelings.

Examples of Primary research methods are:
Questionnaires 

Interviews
Polls/Surveys
Focus Groups (a group of people you get together and ask questions too)
Email/Text/Letter 

One advantage for questionnaires: they can gather information quickly; they are easy to create and you can get direct answers.
One disadvantage is that people can lie and they can be time consuming. 
One advantage for surveys is that they are not expensive and they can be informal if that is what you wanted in your magazine.
One disadvantage is that people might not be interested to answer and they may again be lying. 
One advantage for email is that it is cheap and it is easy to get peoples opinions.
One disadvantage is that it can be reported as junk mail and it also could be ignored.

Examples of Secondary research methods are:

The internet
Books
Newspapers/Newspaper archive

One advantage for the internet is that it is free and you can gather a lot of information from specific websites. 

One disadvantage is that the information on the websites could not be reliable and maybe taken from other sources first.

One advantage from books is that it is mostly correct information and it is easy to find the information you need.

One disadvantage is that it will be expensive if you buy the books you use.

My research methods that I will tend to use will be Primary and quantitive research because they are an easy way to collect the data that I require for my magazine and they are the easiest ways to find opinions on the key features, such as the price, the title and the main one how it attracts them and what they like and dislike about my front cover.