The latest feature is about conducting qualitative and quantitative research at your station which isn’t just about proving audience figures, it’s about proving what you say you do. If you refer to the resources pages you will find a previous feature which looked specifically at the importance of audience research. We aim to build on this by explaining some of the terms to do with research, outlining the relative merits of different methods and demonstrating you some ways of conducting your own research.
We all know that community radio achieves more and is about more than just delivering audiences to a station. Community radio is about delivering new skills, a sense of localness and relevance and a different voice in the often vacuous media landscape.
We all know too that proving to others, grant making bodies, local authorities, partners, that you achieve all these softer outcomes is difficult to do. So there is a tendency to revert back to the numbers game and be caught up in commercial thinking that says size of audience matters.
It doesn’t, and we’d like to show you how you can measure the real meaning in community radio.
We recognise time and money are of minimal availability so we’ve tried to keep it simple without dumbing it down. Brian Lister, a commercial and community radio expert gives us an introduction to how, why and what to measure. We meet Professor Michael Meadows who carried out some pioneering qualitative research, take a look at carrying our focus groups with Janey Gordon and we feature community radio research undertaken by a research consultancy for a community radio station.
Thank you to all our contributors.
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