Before creating our soap we decided to conduct a survey of the public to hear their opinions on soap so that hopefully when we create our own soap we can get the right conventions and make it as successful as possible. We created a questionnaire focusing on existing soaps and asked 25 people whether they watched soaps and those that said they did were asked to answer our questions.
Here is our questionnaire and the public’s answers where each number corresponds to a person’s answer for each question.
The Analysis
After collecting all our data we then analysed it to help make some decisions on our own soap. Here are our results...
First of all we looked at who actually watched soaps and whether they were male or female. As you can see by the graph we found that a lot more women watched soaps than men with 7 women to 3 men. We expected to find this as there seems to be a stereotype in place that soap operas are for women and men aren’t meant to watch them. We thought that this was strange and that hopefully we could break this view with our soap and make a show that everyone could watch. We also found that a lot of people didn’t watch soaps and we have decided we will interview some of these people at a later date so that we can find out why they don't watch soaps and hopefully create a soap that will attract not only viewers of existing soaps but also those that don't usually watch them.
We then looked at the ages of the people that were watching the soaps to try and see a trend. In women we found that the age with the highest percentage were the 15-24 year olds and the 0-14 year olds both with 29%. Therefore we could tell that there are a high number of young people that watch soaps and that we should consider this when thinking our target audience. We saw that all ages watch soaps apart from the 45-54 year old group however this could just be representative of the group we surveyed and a more reliable conclusion could be made from a much larger sample. 
In men we saw the majority that watched soaps were in the 15-24 year old group with only one other person n the 35-44 year old category and from looking at his other answers he answered " my wife makes me" to the question ' What do you like about the soap?'.
The next question was to find out what soaps people are watching at the moment so that we could see what soaps most popular with our sample. We found that Hollyoaks was most popular with 36% of people watching it then followed by Neighbours with 22% which we did not expect. Joint 3rd were Eastenders and Coronation Street. Emmerdale had the least viewers with only one person we asked watching it. From this we could see the Hollyoaks is a clear favourite and is a soap about younger people. This is something we should consider when thinking about our own target audience however should take in to consideration the fact that we sampled more younger people that older people so results could be biased.
Hollyoaks
We asked people why they watched a particular soap and people that said Hollyoaks mentioned that its cool, young and that they can relate to it. They also mentioned that is it’s on at a convenient time so this something we should think about if we decide to have a younger target audience. We asked the people that liked Hollyoaks who their favourite characters and why and got a mix of answers.We asked the people that liked Hollyoaks who their favourite characters were and why and got a mix of answers. People chose Anita and Theresa because they are young and they could relate to them, Hannah because she’s pretty and inspirational, Jean Paul because he’s cute and Nancy because she’s pretty and funny. From this we could see that a lot of peoples favourite characters were based on their appearance and could conclude that people enjoy seeing good looking people on TV and they become idolised by the viewer. Therefore we felt that some consideration should be taken when casting for our trailer, obviously not on how attractive they are but how they suit the character description.
Neighbours
Fans of Neighbours said they enjoyed the different culture and the sun and they loved Australia however this could be an issue for us when making our soap as we are very restricted in setting so we would have to make an English soap opera. When asked about their favourite characters they said Donna because she’s really good looking and Libby because they grew up with her and so relates to her. Once again we could see that people liked characters based on their looks but more importantly a connection to a certain character is very important so we had to make sure when thinking about our characters that we should be stereotypical and create characters that everyone knows someone similar or can see themselves in so that people really connect to the soap and want to see that person progress.
Eastenders
Our Eastenders viewer watches the soap with their mum which showed us that watching a soap opera can be quite a family event therefore we had to make a soap that was suitable for everyone and so that families can watch it together without feeling embarrassed. Their favourite character is Stacy because she’s ‘feisty’ which told us that they liked having a strong influential character to watch.
Coronation Street
People that enjoyed watching Coronation Street said that they watched because they liked the northern element that showed a different culture. Obviously that would be hard for us however we could always think about representing a different social class in our soap. Another person also said that they watch the soap with their wife so we could see that soaps have to be easy viewing for everyone. They’re favourite characters where Michelle because she’s a strong character and Ken because he’s a classic. From this we could again that people like strong characters to support and idolise and they also like to see the same character sticking around so that you can follow their life and really feel like you know that person.
Emmerdale Our Emmerdale fan said they liked it because of the rural theme which is interesting and once again poses the question of how important setting is. We discussed it and thought that it was in fact important and that maybe we should look for a setting that hasn’t already been seen in a soap. Their favourite character was Cain Dingle because he’s exciting which showed us how important interesting, exciting and engaging storylines are to a soap. We also saw that particular characters seem to have most dramatic storylines than others.
In conclusion, from our survey we can take all the things we've learnt and the ideas we've had along the way and use them to make an effective and interesting soap.
