Usage of Secondary Data by Researchers

Why do researchers use secondary data?

Research is the process of finding, gathering, processing and preparation of information for experimentations as well as solving social issues. Social research requires the collection of data, which would be used for the purpose of research being carried out. According to McNeil (1990:99) he claimed that they are two types of data sociologist may use, primary data and secondary data. He stated that primary data is collected by the researchers themselves mainly through experiment, surveys, interviews or participant observation, these methods according to Bryman (2008) can be expensive and time consuming to conduct whereas secondary data is information that is collected from other sources by other researchers in different forms which is produced and processed before it reaches the sociologist.

Accordingly, this definition clearly identifies the main stages of any research done by the researchers. The first step is the development of the concept of research, than search and information gathering, data processing, and then preparation of the final analytical report (Harris, 2001). However, one of the most time-consuming and costly step of any research is the search for and collect information on the researched topic. Depending on your sources of research are divided into desk and field. Moreover, in practice, field and desk research complement each other, solving a specific range. Desk research or secondary research is the research, collection and analysis of existing secondary information the study at a desk. Field research or primary research is the collection and processing of data specifically for marketing analysis. Any field research based on primary data, in other words, the newly obtained data for a particular problem under investigation (Cowton, 1998, 423-434).

Secondary research is a method of social research that uses of information that already exists as per the research done by others. Secondary research is the procurement, processing and interpretation of pre-existing data. The data analysis starts where the experiments, surveys or the qualitative methods produces the data finishes, which according to Bryman (2008) is worth considering than collecting new data. Moreover most of the researches in social science are conducted by government departments and their representatives or official bodies through quantitative methods presented in statistical form. There are several factors involved in the process which leads to usage of secondary data (David & Sutton, 2004). Sources of secondary data are divided into internal: accounting records, internal statistics, the materials of previous research, etc. and external: government statistics, periodicals, publications, social research institutes. Furthermore, secondary data (i.e., information collected for other purposes) have several advantages over the raw data. No questions need to be developed (questionnaires) to collect data or assign individuals to conduct interviews and to reduce the data in the table (Bryman, 2008).

Social science surveys are amongst the common sources of data that is being used in secondary analyses. Apart from that, the data collected, through survey research methods, by various government agencies is also a very common source of data that is used in the secondary analysis (Katz, ...