Entry Three

Entry Three: Primary Research

My chosen type of primary research is a questionnaire. I believe that a questionnaire will give me reliable results that I can analyse and use as evidence to answer my research question. A questionnaire is easy to carry out and will result in me gathering results quickly.

Social Demographics

For my questionnaire I will be asking people from all backgrounds and races; I will be asking both males and females from ages 12+ so that they understand the concept of the use of sexual content in advertising.

Objectives

The aim of my questionnaire is to find out how many people recognize the high use of sexual content in advertising to catch the audience’s attention. Different questions will be asked to see how many people spot the use of sexual content and it would be interesting to see people’s views on the use of it; if they agree with or disagree. After carrying out the questionnaire I will analyse the data and present my statistics so that I can give evidence to prove my findings.

My questionnaire will be printed and then distributed to people of all ages from 12+ and of all different backgrounds and genders. After the questionnaires have been filled in I will then analyse my findings and write up my results and what they present about the use of sex in advertising.

Advantages
A questionnaire is straightforward to carry out and also easy to analyse. I can use my questionnaires to write my results and produce conclusions. My sample consists of males and females from the ages 12+. The respondents will be easy to access because there are a wide variety of people at my school; people from many different backgrounds and ages. My results will not be sexist as I am using a fair sample of 12 males and females.

Disadvantages
The fact that I am only using a sample of 24 people limits my results; to improve my conclusion I could use a sample of 50 people to make my results more reliable in the future. My sample will be from people who live in London; this will limit my results.
People may not answer my questionnaire suitably; this may be due to a lack of concentration.


Sex in Advertising- Questionnaire

Gender ?

Male Female

Do you agree that sexual content should be allowed to be used in advertising?

Strongly Agree Agree Disagree Strongly Disagree

Does sexual content in advertising attract you into buying/researching the product?

Yes No Sometimes Don’t know

Would you rather watch advertisements that show sexual content or not?

Yes No Sometimes Don’t know

Which types of products do you see being promoted using sexual content?

Fragrances Clothes Food Jewellery Alcohol Other ……

How effective do you think sex in advertising is?

Very Mildly Not Very



Results

My sample consisted of 24 people; 12 male and 12 female

Q1. 4 people said strongly, 11 people said agree, 7 people said disagree and 2 people said strongly disagree.

Q2. 8 people said yes, 12 people said no and 4 people said sometimes

Q3. 4 people said yes, 7 people said no, 9 people said sometimes and 4 said don’t know

Q4. 4 people said fragrances, 6 people said clothes, 1 person said food, 3 people said jewellery, 2 people said alcohol, and 9 people said other.
Other: these included shampoo and body wash adverts, cars, toilet paper.

Q5. 18 people said very, 3 people said mildly and 3 people said not very


My results from Q1 reveal that more people agree with the legalisation of sexual content in advertising. 4 people strongly agreed and 11 people agreed; this exposes that the target audience don’t mind watching sexual content in advertising as it may interest them into watching the advertisement and even persuade them into buying the product. Those who disagree may do so due to the representation of women as sex objects in some advertising campaigns such as Lynx deodorant. This can be very degrading to some women and even be against some religious beliefs.

Q2 portrays that the use of sexual content in advertising doesn’t attract all audiences to go out and purchase the product. 8 people said yes and 12 people said no; this maybe due to that people thinking more about what they are purchasing rather than just basing their decision on what the advert shows. So the use of sex grabs the attention of the audience but not necessarily affect their final decision about whether to buy the product/service.

Q3 presents the audience to be a little two minded about the decision if they want to see sexual content or not in advertisements. The highest response was 9 for sometimes seeing sexual content; this shows again the audience doesn’t mind seeing sexual content.

Q4 shows that clothes and other were the most popular choice. Clothes such as lingerie use sexual content to attract audiences and persuade them into buying them. In the Other category body wash advertisements such as Lynx have used woman to sell their products to men.

Q5 clearly reveals that a high percentage of people believe that sexual content in advertising is effective in the way that it effects people’s opinions and persuades some people to buy certain products.