Research

One of the things I have learnt about research is that there are two sources, primary and secondary.
Primary research is research that you have done or found yourself, for example, an interview or questionnaire. 
Secondary research is research done by someone else that you can use, such as the information found on internet sites or in books. 

There are two types of primary and secondary research, qualitative and quantitative. 
Qualitative research is research done on a small scale like a interview or using an individual site and it deals with personal feelings, ideas or opinions. 
Quantitative research is research done on a wide scale using something like survey or a industry site.
This is more effective it you want to gather statistics or facts to do with what you are researching. 

When doing research for my magazine I will use a range of qualitative and quantitative primary and secondary research methods. For example:

The primary research methods I will use will be:

• Focus groups - to learn more about what my target audience would like in a new music magazine. 
• Surveys/questionnaires - to find out what genre of music would be best to feature in my magazine. 
• Textual analysis - to find out what techniques existing magazines use to make their magazine appealing. 

The secondary research methods I will use will be:

• Internet/search engines - to find popular magazines and what they contain etc. 
• Copies of existing magazines - to see how they lay out their entire magazines to get ideas for my contents page and inside article.