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Home > Research > Not Just Kids' Stuff la!
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Introduction
Patable
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Methodology
The ultimate purpose of the present study is to address McMug's popularity across age groups. It aims to study the public's perception of McMug and the creators' own account of its success, and finally compares these two to analyze how the ideology of McMug is perceived by the public and how it contribute to McMug's success. Public opinion was collected by distributing questionnaires to potential respondents, while the creators' account was examined by reviewing past issues of McMug and previous interviews conducted with Mr Brain Tse and Ms Alice Mak.
The Public Opinion Participants The target population originally included people aged between 15 and 40, but it was redefined. The final sample included people aged between 8 and 30. 138 people completed a questionnaire asking detailed questions about their feelings about McMug. 3 respondents were waived due to insincere responses. The final sample consisted of 88 women and 47 men. Figure 1 indicates the distribution of age among the respondents. People aged 10-15 (46 respondents) and people aged 18-20 (40 respondents) dominated the sample. 27 respondents aged 18-20. 8 respondents aged 26-30. 2 respondents aged 10 or below. As Figure 2 indicates, 62 respondents had achieved educational qualification equal to or lower than HKCEE. 6 had completed HKALE. 54 were then undergraduates. 7 were degree holders. 6 were postgraduate students. These two figures suggest imbalance in the final sample regarding age and educational background. This is due to the undesirable way questionnaires were distributed. A comparatively large amount of questionnaires were distributed on the CUHK campus and sent to secondary school students, while the amount of responses obtained from the Internet was not large enough to maintain a balance of age and educational background. Comparison in terms of age and educational background was thus made between the final sample and the Internet sector, respondents of which should have come across the online questionnaire by fair chance [3]. Figure 3 and Figure 4 indicate similar distribution of age and academic qualifications in the final sample and the Internet sector. This suggests that the final sample bears considerable resemblance to the population of potential readers of McMug. This study worked with this concession. Treatment of certain data was amended to lessen the imbalance in age and educational background. The Questionnaire The questionnaire included 11 questions. It could be divided into four sections. The first section required the respondent's personal information, excluding name. The second section (Q1-Q6) was about the respondent's experience ofreading McMug, if he or she had ever read it. The third section (Q7-Q12) found out which aspects of McMug interested the respondent most and the reasons. The forth section (Q13) was about the respondent's opinion about the suitability of McMug being read by children and adults. Since some respondents had not read or heard of McMug, in order to provide them enough understanding of McMug to respond to the questionnaire, an extract from McMug was given with the questionnaire. This questionnaire was translated into Chinese and simplified [4] especially for those respondents who had not completed HKCEE yet. Procedure Questionnaires were distributed by a number of different means. 39 questionnaires were distributed in the main library at CUHK and 37 completed questionnaires were returned. Respondents were selected randomly. 90 questionnaires (in Chinese) were sent evenly by mail to five secondary school students, who, in turn, conducted interviews through telephone among their fellows. 44 completed questionnaires were returned. 17 questionnaires were distributed (in Chinese) by one fellow student and all were returned valid. Innumerable questionnaires were distributed via the Internet and 37 completed questionnaires were returned. Questionnaires were distributed over the Internet by three means. First, questionnaires were sent to those who had recently signed the guestbooks of some frequently visited websites dedicated to McMug [5]. Second, questionnaires were sent to members of an on-line mailing list devoted to McMug. Third, a website on behalf of this research was constructed. It explained the purpose and the approach of this research. It also provided the proposal, the questionnaire, and resources for the present study. This website, to my gratitude, exchanged hyperlinks with a few popular McMug websites including the website of Yellow Bus. Visitors were able to request for the questionnaire by e-mailing me. This served as the main channel of getting responses from the Internet. Data Handling Data collected was kept in a database on my personal computer under strictest confidence. E-mail replies that contained personal information of the respondents (e.g. name and address) were deleted right after successful data entry. Measures This study aims to analyze McMug's popularity among both children and adults. In other words, it aims to account for the way McMug pleases different mentalities. In order to study how difference in mentality affects people's perception on McMug, the sample was divided into five groups according to educational background instead of age. As explained above, there was imbalance of age in the sample. People aged 10-15 (below HKCEE) and 2l-25 (undergraduate) outnumbered other age groups. To tackle this shortcoming, findings are presented mostly in percentage so that there is a common unit for comparison. Also due to this imbalance, emphasis is put on the change of attitude across different levels of mentality rather than on the exact measures of the findings. Most results are thus presented by charts that show the trend in relation to educational background. Since the results in percentage are considerably large, one digital place will be fair enough for data presentation. The Creators' Account As primary resources are always preferred in doing research, attempts were made to arrange an interview with Mr Brian Tse and Ms Alice Mak. A list of possible subject matters to discuss during the interview was faxed to Bliss Press Ltd directed to Mr Tse with a covering letter explaining briefly the purpose of the present study. However, as his colleague confessed, Mr Tse was busy then and a reply was received only after the research had been finished. Eleven local children's periodicals were also approached [6]. A questionnaire was sent to each periodical with a covering letter asking some open questions about McMug's popularity and its role in local children's literature. No feedback was received. Ascribed to the lack of primary resources, intensive studies were done on published works of McMug and on previous interviews with Mr Tse and Ms Mak. Mr Tse used to write a few lines for each issue of McMug, and the creators were asked to explain the ideology of McMug during previous interviews. Therefore, the creators' own account on McMug's success and its ideology was obtained from these original works and previous studies.
Endnotes 3. This comparison was just for contrast. It was understood that most Web users then were older than 17, since lower-form students usually had no access to the Internet. Yet, respondents from the Internet vector would resemble the population of McMug's potential readers. For those who visited my website were likely to be McMug's readers. [Back] 4. The translation was done by me. Although translation is not among my areas of proficiency, I consider the imperfection of my translation minor enough to keep the questionnaire comprehensive. [Back] 5. This act, regrettably, as I realized later, is intrusive and I must apologize for all troubles caused. [Back] 6. The eleven periodicals are: U-Beat Magazine, Breakthrough Magazine, Breakthrough Junior Magazine, Walt Disney's Mickey, " 星島好兒童," "兒童之友," "兒童文學藝術," "現代少年," "明報兒童周刊," and "白羚羊." [Back] |
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