Questionnaire

I compiled a questionnaire which, I hoped, would give me some more ideas on what to include in my magazine. Questions asked included music preference and other opinionated views. Here is a copy of the questionnaire :

Music questionnaire
Thank you for taking part in my questionnaire. In this questionnaire I am hoping to find the key criteria when producing a music magazine and any answers I receive will be taken into account. Please circle your choices, and where there are dots after an option please specify.
1. What gender are you? Male Female
2. What age range are do you fit? 0-9 10-19 20-29 30-39 40-49 50+
3. What music do you prefer? Rock Pop Jazz Classical Other............
4. Are you more interested in male or female musicians? Male Female
5. What 3 things do you look for in a magazine?

a. ......................................................................

b. ......................................................................

c. ......................................................................

6. Do you believe that colour is important in a magazine? Yes No
7. Do you think that it is important for the information to be relevant? Yes No
8. Does the brand of magazine influence you, or is it the context? Brand Context Both
9. Do you prefer it to be plain and simple or full of information? Plain Full
10. Any other comments:




Thank you for taking part in my questionnaire.

I gave this questionnaire out to 50 random people and these were the responses :

Gender (34 male, 16 female) : This shows that I attempted to include people regardless of gender, however I felt that my magazine was going to be mainly for the male population. This does not mean that females cannot purchase this magazine, as there will be some things that will be appropriate for women.

Age range : This shows that my target audience is kept to (teenagers to 30 year olds, red and green) however I have also included view-points from other members of the public to see whether this has an influence on how I think about making my project.

Musical Preference : This is what I thought the response would be to this question. I believe that in this modern day more people are listening to rock music than pop and this backs up my theory. The other category included metal, dance and R’n’B.

Musician gender (38 male, 12 female): This was an interesting question as I had no idea what the outcome would be. As you can see, more people choose male musicians, maybe because people are attracted to their personality, or maybe because they write better music.

Three things people look for : The three things that people look for were, in no particular order, a famous musician they like, freebies and controversial topics. I agree with this response as these are the things that I would look for, and so I will attempt to make my magazine have all of these things.

Is colour important? (45 yes, 5 no): I thought that this would be the case; however I did not expect it to be such a landslide margin. I believe that colour is important when making a magazine because it is what primarily attracts the reader into buying the magazine, and so this question was to see whether other members of the public agreed.

Is relevance important? (50 yes, 0 no): Of course it is. An article must be relevant otherwise the reader will skip ahead onto another article, which is not what an article is there for. I think that this question was to see whether it was as important as I thought it was, and it quite clearly is.

Brand or context? (16 Brand, 11 Context, 23 both): I would have expected more people to focus on the brand than on the context, as I believe that people care more about what other people are buying. It was no surprise to me that more people chose brand than context, however the smaller margin was something that did surprise me. With the majority of people choosing both, I feel that this was possibly the better response.

Plain or full? (21 Plain, 29 full): It would appear that the majority of people prefer their article to be full of information and text. This does not necessarily mean cluttered. I think that people will want to get their money’s worth out of their magazine and therefore the more information the better.

There were no relevant responses for 10. Any other comments.

From this questionnaire I have been able to deduce things that I may not have realised earlier. I now know that my target audience feel roughly the same as me, in the sense that rock is on the increase (I categorise alternative into this section). They also agree that male musicians are better, that both colour and relevance are required and that it is better for a magazine to be full of information. Unfortunately they also decided that it was better to have a branded magazine rather than a magazine with context and so this will work against me as my magazine will be new. Hopefully with the right mixture of marketing and distribution I will be able to get my new magazine up to a recognisable brand of magazine.