What is Secondary data?
Secondary data refers to data that has already been collected and documented elsewhere for a specific purpose.
Secondary data is data collected by somebody else for other purposes (although investigators use it for other purposes).
Secondary data is the data that has already been collected through primary sources and made readily available for researchers to use for their own research. https://communalpen.com
Source
With the arrival of electronic media and therefore the Internet, access to secondary data sources has become easier. Below are a number of these highlighted sources.
- Book
Books are one among the foremost traditional ways to gather information. Today, there are books available for all the themes you’ll consider. All you’ve got to try to when doing research is to seek out a book on the topic being studied and choose from the book repositories available in your area. Books, when carefully selected, are a real source of genuine data and may assist you steel oneself against a literature review.
2. Published source
There are different public sources available for various research topics. The authenticity of the info generated from these sources depends totally on the author and publisher.
Published sources are often printed or digitized in some cases. it’s going to be paid or free, counting on the author’s and publisher’s decisions.
3. Unpublished personal sources
Compared to public sources, this is often not readily available and should not be easily accessible. they’re going to only be available if the researcher shares it with another researcher who isn’t authorized to share it with a 3rd party.
For example, an organization’s product management team may have customer feedback data to guage what customers consider their products and suggestions for enhancements. to enhance customer service, they have to gather data primarily from the customer service department that collects the info.
4. Journal
Recently, journals became increasingly more important than books when it involves data collection. this is often because the journal is often updated with new publications to supply the newest data.
Also, when it involves research, journals are usually more specific. for instance, you’ll create a journal on “Secondary Data Collection of Quantitative Data” and title the book “Secondary Data Collection”.
5. Newspaper
In most cases, the knowledge skilled the newspaper is typically very reliable. Therefore, it’s one among the foremost reliable sources for collecting secondary data.
The types of knowledge commonly shared in newspapers are usually political, economic, and academic instead of scientific. Therefore, newspapers might not be the simplest source of data for scientific data collection.
6. Website
The information shared on websites is essentially unregulated and should be unreliable compared to other sources. However, there are some regulated websites that share only genuine data and may be trusted by researchers.
Most of those websites are usually government websites or paid private organizations, data collectors.
7. Blogs
Blogs are one among the foremost common online sources of knowledge and may be less reliable than websites. Nowadays, virtually everyone owns blogs, and lots of use these blogs to extend traffic to their websites and make money through paid advertising.
Therefore, it’s not always reliable for instance, a blogger could also be writing goodies a few products. This is often because the manufacturer purchased this stuff albeit they weren’t true.
8. Records from the Government
A very important and reliable source of secondary data is government records. They contain useful data for marketing, management, humanities, and social science research.
Some of these records include information from censuses, health records, educational institution records, and more. These are typically collected to assist in proper planning, funding, and project prioritization.
9. Podcast
Podcasts are becoming more and more popular these days, and many people listen to podcasts instead of the radio. They are more or less like online radio stations and are becoming more and more popular.
Information is typically shared during podcasts and listeners can use it as a source for data collection.
Limitation:
Data quality:
Data collected through a secondary source may not be as genuine as it would be if it were collected directly from the source. This is a very common drawback with online sources, as there is no regulatory body to monitor the type of content being shared.
Therefore, working with this type of data can adversely affect the research being conducted.
Unrelated data:
Researchers spend a lot of time surfing pools of irrelevant data before finally getting the data they need. This is mainly because the data is not collected for researchers.
In some cases, researchers may not even be able to find the exact data they need, but they need to find the next best option.
Exaggerated data
Some data sources are known to exaggerate shared information. This prejudice can be due to maintaining a good public image or due to paid advertising.
This is very common on many online blogs that use beads to share false information just to capture web traffic. For example, FinTech start-ups may exaggerate https://juantorreslopez.com/ the amount processed just to attract more customers.
Researchers who collect this data and investigate the total amount processed by FinTech start-ups in the United States in the quarter may need to use this exaggerated data.
Old information
Some data sources are old and there is no new available data to replace the old data. For example, censuses are usually not updated annually.
Therefore, the population of the country has changed since the last census. But someone working with the country’s population needs to settle on previously recorded numbers, even if it’s outdated.https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/definition/secondary-data