A couple of weeks before the Christmas holidays myself and my group were prepared to hand out questionnaires and conduct a focus group to gather some primary information to back up our material so far. We had first decided at the beginning of this process that we were going to carry out this part of the research through a school because Tony's sister is a teacher. As time went on it became more and more apparent that we wouldn't be able use her to help us out due to multiple reasons such as time constraints, busy schedules etc.
Lucky for us we had a back up plan if this was to fall through. I used to be a member and also a volunteer at a youth club called "The Loft Zone" which is held at The Foundry Church in Widnes. "The Loft Zone" is open to the public every Wednesday and Friday, 6pm - 11pm where about 30 - 50 people attend, varying in ages from the likes of 6 years old to 17 years old.
There are a numerous amount of volunteers and leaders who try to engage with the people attending through all different kinds of activities and fun things to do. I knew this would be a perfect place for us to conduct our research and hand out questionnaires.
After contacting the senior leader Lucas Dewhurst who I know personally, he gave us permission for us to go down on the days of our choosing to carry out our research and was able to supervise us as we carried it out. Myself and Matt were the only two who went to conduct our research method as we were the only ones with CRB checks which meant it was only right that we went. We attended "The Loft Zone" on both the 7th and 9th of December because we felt if we did it over the space of 2 days we could get the views of a variety of kids/young teenagers which would provide a wider range of results.
As a team we came up with a variety of questions to ask our target audience (8-12 year olds) and also decided amongst ourselves that we wouldn't just hand out textual based questionnairs for the kids/teens to fill in. We wanted our questionnaire to be a little more engaging. We wanted them to actually want to answer the questions and get involved, and also give us more of an open answer. We came up with the idea of having cut outs and diagrams which you had to colour in to show your answer. These cut outs and diagrams reflected answers to the questions we would be probing the target audience with. Below are the questions and a couple of diagrams just showing the style of the answers to our questionnaire.
Questions
- How old are you?
- What do you use the internet for? (a big sheet of paper provided for answers to be written down by all members of the groups)
- Put these 11 websites in order of favouritism, putting your least favourite at the bottom and then ordered them one above the other with your favourite at the top)
- How much time do you spend on the internet? (colour in activity)
- Do you use the CBBC website?
- If so, what do you like the most about the CBBC website? (answers on big sheet of paper)
We found out that the older age range spend more time on the internet that the younger ones. They mainly go on the internet to get away from everything. The internet is seen as sort of a place were they can go and relax, escape for a few hours and just socialise/play games. It seems what we had already expected or had known from pervious research is coming true and being reflected in our questionnaire.
The kids where great in getting involved and helping us with our research, they just saw it as just another club activity and a way to chilling out with one another. It was a fun experience and helpful to our project.
Having the different groups of kids collate their answers for some of the questions on a huge sheet of paper really just acted as a huge poster for us to look over, making it easier for us to collect our results. And as kids were writing down their answers it was good to be able to talk to them more in depth about their answers and why they were writing them down. I found it easy to connect with the kids there mainly because I have helped out there before and know a few of the attendances.
Here we displayed 10 websites that we found to be popular with our target audience. The task was to arrange the 10 sites in order of their least favourite to their favourite. Each individual's answers were recorded in a tally as the representation of the order in which they put the sites in would give each individual site a score between 1 and 11. For example if they put Mininclip in seventh position then it would score 7 points. A point system would make it easier for us to tally up the results to produce a graph reflecting our findings.
The diagram above is just a representation of the answers to one of the questions we were asking. We designed the answers to be shown in circular diagram which was split into different segments were a different answer would be. The idea of this was for us to ask the question to our target audience and for them then to colour in their answer, giving us a clear indication and also making it a little more fun for them to be taking part. Whilst the participants were colouring in their answers we would be engaging with them a little more about the questions to try and get a more in depth answer to why they had chosen that option.
Over the 2 nights we had 30 different children participate in our questionnaire/focus group, 5 representing each age from our given target audience. We made sure this was possible so that it was a completely fair test that we were carrying out, and so that the results could not be swayed to one side more than the other.
We also conducted the questionnaires/focus groups in groups of 5 which made it easier for us because we didn't have to print out 300 cut outs for the website question, and it also made it easier for us to engage with the participants because they didn't feel under pressure or nervous seeing as they were with friends.
Once we had successfully carried out our test we then rendezvoused with the rest of the team to gather our results and looked to see what our findings were. We needed to find out if they matched our hyphothesis and if there was any patterns emerging.
Graphs Representing Our Results
Age 8
Blogger 2% | Facebook 4% | MySpace 5% | YouTube 7% | Habbo 11% |
Bebo 12% | CITV 14% | Miniclip 14% | Cartoon N 15 % | Cbbc 15% |
Age 9
Blogger 2% | Facebook 6% | MySpace 6% | Habbo 8% | You tube 9% |
Cartoon N 12% | CBBC 12% | CITV 13% | Bebo 15% | Miniclip 16% |
Age 10
Blogger 2% | Habbo 8% | CITV 9% | Cartoon N 10% | You tube 10% |
CBBC 11% | MySpace 11% | Facebook 12% | Bebo 13% | Miniclip 15% |
Age 11
Blogger 3% | Habbo 6% | CITV 6% | Cartoon N 9% | You tube 10% |
CBBC 11% | Facebook 13% | MySpace 14% | Miniclip 14% | Bebo 14% |
Age 12
Blogger 3% | Habbo 4% | CITV 5% | Cartoon N 8% | CBBC 11% |
You tube 12% | Bebo 13% | Miniclip 14% | MySpace 14% | Facebook 15% |
Overall
Blogger 2% | Habbo 7% | CITV 9% | You tube 9% | Facebook 10% |
Cartoon N 11% | MySpace 12% | CBBC 12% | Bebo 13% | Miniclip 14% |
From the graphs we can see that the younger side of the spectrum were more swayed to going on websites that reflected the adverage day interests of a young person, which is watching telly and playing games. The top 5 sites for the 8 and 9 year olds were CBBC, Cartoon Network, MiniClip, CITV and Bebo. Bebo was a surprising one but when looking into what Bebo site actually is we could see how it was appealing. It seems like a more fun and younger version of Facebook/Myspace. Maybe Bebo is the stepping point from were people move onto other social networking sites?
You can see as the age groups get older you can see a change in interests, or maybe not even interests but a way of growing up. The social networking sites become more dominant although the CBBC stays relatively around the same position throughout. This shows that it has some appeal still to young people as they grow older. However if people are straying to social networking sites were they have some sense of freedom to interact with their friends and other people without so many restrictions, then soon enough they will become tired of the CBBC site I would think.
Bebo is a popular choice with all ages as you can clearly see in the results. It may still be used by young people as they grow older because they still have an account and there it may have some aspects that they still enjoy. There is that thought though that there is a graduate change in maturity, the switch between Bebo to Facebook or even Myspace. This change in identity.
Miniclip stays a favourite because it appeals to an interest that most people enjoy, which is gaming. From other research and what we were shown in the Rebel Play presentation gaming is a huge hobby for all ages and genders. It's not about knowing who you are or telling people about your interests. It's basically a way of having fun and relaxing.
Blogger was an interesting choice for us to include because I think it's personally more of a older teenager/adult website. It's a way of reflection, personal diary broadcast on a wide scale yet it's really not that personal. Even though it had a low percentage it was interesting that to know that there were some people who knew about it and were using it.
Parents Questionnaire
Whilst we were at "The Loft Zone" we asked parents who were there to drop off/pick up their children if they could spare a few minutes to fill out our questionnaire. We also asked team leaders of the youth club who have children themselves if they would be willing to fill in a questionnaire for us. 30 parents kindly partcipated and our questions/results are as follows below.
(The answers to the open questions have been abbreviated and only show the most common answers)
Questions and Answers
Question 1: Are you concerned with the content your children could be viewing online? If yes, why?
Yes = 22 No = 8
Why: Concerned about harmful and adult content. Parents' are also worried about their children talking to strangers on the Internet and potentially revealing personal details.
Question 2: How much restriction do you put in place on your home computer for your child? If you do, what precautions do you take?
None = 11 Very Little = 14 A lot = 5
Precautions taken: Blocking certain website, setting google search to "strict". Installing anti-spyware and other software.
Question 3: Do you check the websites your child visits for any inappropriate content that may be unsuitable?
No = 3 Sometimes = 16 All the time = 11
Question 4: Are you concerned with social networking sites? If yes, what concerns you the most?
Yes = 17 No = 13
Most concerning aspects: Talking to strangers, personal information being distributed and cyber bullying.
Question 5: What kind of things do you think attract your children to a website?
Answer: Socialising with friends and games.
Question 6: How often do your children use the CBBC website on a weekly basis?
Not at all = 0 Less than an hour = 3 1-2 hours = 9 2-5 hours = 18 5+ hours = 0
Question 7: Are you aware of the precautions the CBBC takes to protect your children online?
Yes = 4 No = 26
Question 8: If you do, do you feel the precautions they take are adequate for your child's safety?
Yes = 4 No = 0
Question 9: What features included on a website would make your feel that your child is safe online?
Answer: Moderation on websites. This was the most popular answer.
When talking to the parents about what the BBC offers in the terms of safety online the majority of them felt that the CBBC website's safety precautions were to an adequate standard. We felt it necessary to inform those who didn't know about what the BBC offers just so we could quickly get their opinion on whether or not they felt they were doing all they could do to keep their children safe.
Unfortunately with the research that we carried out about online participation, we came to the conclusion that the current state of the safety implace could be a beneficial factor to discouraging participation. Therefore there needs to be some common middle ground that allows the users to have more of an online presence/freedome but also follow the rules and regulations of the childrens online privacy act.
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