Research: Analysis of Audience Survey

From the survey I have conducted I have found out a number of things about an audience's perceptions and expectations on horror films as well as some personal preferences.

Perceptions

This graph shows me that the perceptions of males and females on horror films is different. It shows that most males neither love or hate horror films, however based on my results it suggests more males really don't like horror films than females. When looking at the results of the female respondents it shows more females really liking horror films.
A question that lead on from this was 'Based on the question above, why do you feel this way about horror films?' which gave me some qualitative data which meant I could get more detail from respondents and try to understand the perceptions of the audience fully. I gained some information from this by taking commonly occurring words and found that negative perceptions about horror films was due to them being boring, typical, predictable, not enjoyable and uninteresting. The reasons behind positive perceptions were that they're entertaining and interesting,  the tension, adrenaline, other peoples reactions being funny and in general respondents liking being scared or made to jump.

Preferences

This pie chart shows that over half (52.6%) prefer to see serial killers in horror films, zombies were second in favour and ghosts were third, this includes 'the unknown'. Therefore we can conclude that modern audiences expect a good horror film to have either serial killers, zombies or ghosts in.

I have print screened some of my results from three questions showing audiences preferences on where, who and when they watch horror films. It shows me that a large proportion of audiences (50% based on my respondents) prefer to watch a horror film in a cinema. Also it shows 95% of people prefer to watch a horror film with friends, only one person from my results answered that they prefer to watch them on there own. Finally from question 8, I can see that most people watch horror films monthly if they ever.

Above are all of the films that appeared in my questionnaire when respondents were asked what their favourite horror film was. The one that came up the most frequently (3 times) was Saw, no specific one was given which I think could be because of how well known the films are. The second most frequent was Sinister (2 times) which I believe was because it is a new release out in cinemas now.

Expectations

From the open question 'What is your favourite thing about horror films?' I have transformed it from qualitative into quantitative data therefore being able to create the pie chart above. From this I can see that the two favourite expected things in horror films are being scared and being made to jump. This is used in the majority of horror films and is what audiences expect but it also what a lot of people like about horror films as it creates tension and adrenaline. Other aspects of audiences expectations of a successful horror film are an interesting plot and special effects.