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Audiences
• Do you have one?
• Glossary
• Response techniques
• Using research findings
• Ideas about audiences
Research resources
• Books
• Software
• Qualitative research
• Statistics
• Case studies
• Know Your Audience
About us
• Our research services
• Our internet services
• Questionnaire
• Contact us
• Moving in
We specially welcome people in developing countries. So we have tried to make this web site easily accessible even if you have a low-speed modem or an old computer. To help people whose first language is not English, we have tried to write in a way that you can easily understand, avoiding unnecessary jargon.
Doing audience research takes more time than you expect at first, but that time is repaid by the amount you learn about your audience. If you are interested in learning to do audience research (whether you do the work yourself, or commission us, or another group) this site is for you.
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do you have an audience?
If you're a broadcaster or an organizer of performing arts,
you have an audience. If you're a publisher, you have readers.
If you own a web site or an art gallery, you call them visitors.
If you are a government, they are citizens, voters, residents, or ratepayers.
Other industries call them users, clients, and customers.
It's confusing to have so many different terms for the same role. So when we talk about "audiences" we mean all of these.
glossary
Brief, clear explanations of 200-odd terms used in audience research,
evaluation, and media studies. In the Internet Services section of this
site, we have another glossary:
Internet jargon simply explained.
response techniques
For small organizations, which can't afford regular surveys,
we've been developing methods for helping them to be more in touch
with their audiences.
It's not quite research, not quite marketing, not quite strategic planning,
but something in between all of these.
As there's no known term for this, we're calling it "response techniques".
using research results
It's one thing to carry out high-quality research, but to use the results
well is a different art.
Here are some thoughts on how to make research findings more usable.
ideas about audiences
October 2000
A new part of this site, different from all the rest, because it will focus
on arguments rather than facts and techniques. We plan to add some
pages focusing on the future of audiences.
research resources on the Web
A guide to web sites which provide useful information
for people interested in doing small-scale research.
The same techniques are used in other types of research about people:
social research, and market research.
Know Your Audience
A practical guide to audience research. A hands-on book
by our founder Dennis List, on the methods of audience research,
with an emphasis on developing countries.
This will replace his earlier book, the
Audience Survey Cookbook.
books on audience research
A selection of books that we use a lot: on audience research, evaluation,
monitoring, usability, and related topics.
software for research
A guide to some of the widely available software packages,
with comments on their suitability for various types of research.
The emphasis is on software that's widely available, cheap, bug-free,
quickly learned, powerful, and easy to use.
(That rules out just about everything!)
research with words
The traditional way to do audience research is to do a survey:
you count everything in sight, then carry out statistical tests
on the resulting numbers, hoping to find a meaningful pattern.
Qualitative research takes a totally different approach:
you organize words, not numbers.
research with numbers
For a lot of people interested in doing research,
statistics is an impenetrable jungle of numbers.
Here are some of the Internet's clearest introductions to statistical
thinking.
case studies
Approaches that we have used to solve a wide range of
audience research problems.
If you find Know Your Audience too abstract,
you may prefer to understand audience research by reading these
case studies.
odd links
Web links on an assortment of topics that interest us,
and have some connection with our work.
These include readability, language tools, data visualization,
community broadcasting, future studies, and aid program evaluation.
what we do, and who we are
Audience Dialogue was founded by Dennis List.
We are based in Adelaide, Australia. Though we are still a small organization,
we have clients in most continents.
We use research-based methods for improving communications between organizations and their audiences. Summary: we work with our clients, not for them - to help them communicate with their audiences, not to them.
You can read more about Audience Dialogue here, and about our research approach here.
internet marketing services
Another thing we do (mainly in Australia) is help organizations set up
internet marketing systems.
Here's some background information that you might find useful.
the questionnaire
This is a research site, after all.
Surely you didn't think you'd be allowed to escape without filling in a
questionnaire! Here's an example of one
that anybody can use on their own web site.
contact us
Is there something you think we should add? Did you find a mistake?
Or do you just feel like making a comment?
Please tell us: we always like to get feedback.
updated 11 November 2000
We're still moving into our new online home at this site.
There are lots of files to move across from our old site,
and it may take a while to finish the updating and checking.
In the meantime, if you find a dead link here,
the file will probably be on our old site at
www.tou.com/host/audres
- though maybe out of date. Thanks for your patience.
email:
info@audiencedialogue.org
site author: Dennis List
