Advantages and Disadvantages of Sources

Accessibility - Was the research easy to find?
For the most part, yes. For AS I already had a collection of magazines I could use for reseaching conventions and anything I didn't have could be found easily online. For A2 again the internet was very useful, I could find all the videos I needed on YouTube and anything else through a simple Google search.

Time - Was it time consuming?
For both AS and A2 once I knew what I needed to research it was pretty simple to find so it never took too long. Also, a lot of what I found I did so by accident. I would often see things that would influence or inspire my ideas and then add them to my blog, rather than spending hours searching for something.

Reliability - Was the research measured to be consistent - did you find a trustworthy source? Was it another student's work?
I remember that when researching for AS as well as finding genuine magazines there were also a lot of student made magazines online. To avoid looking at unhelpful sources I made sure to look for names I recognised such as Kerrang! and NME - this way I knew that it was a trustworthy source. At A2 it was similiar, I found student made videos too but I looked for artists that I recognised such as Evanescence and Christina Perri.

Accuracy - Were the facts and figures correct?
For the AS work I carried out a questionnaire which meant I could control the feedback that I was getting so I knew it was reliable. It also asked specific questions, making it all relevant to my work and I could clearly see in terms of numbers what was preferable for my audience.

Did your audience feedback results provide a fair sample of over all opinions? Was it bias?
I think that most of the feedback I got at AS and A2 was fair. A lot of it helped me to progress and think about things that i hadn't thought of before. Sometimes I'd find that because a someone didn't like or know a lot about the genre I was doing they would give slightly bias feedback but I tried to consider everything, even if I didn't use it in the end.

Validity - Was there a link between the particular research and the final product? Was there a strong indication that this research affected the outcome of your work?
For AS I knew what that I wanted to use the rock genre straight away so understandably my research was into the conventions of rock genre magazines. I set out to create that kind of magazine, so I wouldn't say my research completely influenced my work, just that I knew what I was setting out to make. However, it was very useful to have that research there and I did use a lot of the ideas. For A2 I again had a very clear initial idea but this time, for the music video, the reality actually moved away from the initial idea and the research and became something quite different.