Research Rationale

I have decided to create a music magazine revolving around the genre of rap. It will be targeted at young people who enjoy this genre of music, specifically young females from the ages of 16-18 years, however young males will be more than welcome to viewing it if they feel it attracts them. Although, the reason why it's mainly targeted to females is because I feel that rap music is more often than not directed at the male population. Also, usually whenever females are portrayed on rap magazines, they're sexualised and I would like to show young females that we should be empowered instead of objectified.
My choice of the target audience will make researching opinions a lot easier, as I got to sixth form with girls these ages. I will also be able to ask students my age and younger. Although I have an idea of what genre of music I would like to create a magazine on, I would like to collect some research from the target audience and see whether there was a particular genre of music they feel doesn't get represented enough than other genres (i.e. Rock, Blues etc.).

 For research, I will be asking groups of my target audience how they feel about music magazines and whether or not their preferred genre of music is promoted enough. This could help solidify my choice of music magazine I hope to be making or push me down a different genre. While I've already focused on the age group, I haven't completely settled on the idea of targeting it at a specific gender. Therefore, by conducting my research, I hope to discover whether or not young males will be interesting in the approach I look to take for my rap music magazine. I will be providing the groups with magazines of the same genre and ask specific questions that will help me see how they view magazines of the rap genre.

 I will be taking quantitative and qualitative research. In order to take quantitative research, I will be providing students of my target audience with a questionnaire and even online surveys - that I will be making myself - so I can find out information such as, what they like to take from a music magazine and what they would like to avoid (e.g. irrelevant information).
 I will also need to take qualitative research so I can find out what readers like to see on a magazine and how they feel towards the portrayal of artists they may or may not like.

 I will use Web 2.0 to gain inspiration from other magazines, researching about my chosen genre of music as well as collecting data from my online surveys. I will ensure to note the responses of my target audience once they've seen my own interpretation of a rap magazine and how they feel about my approach.