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Secondary Research Advantages, Limitations, and Sources

Summary: secondary research should be a prerequisite to the collection of primary data, but it rarely provides all the answers you need. a thorough evaluation of the secondary data is needed to assess its relevance and accuracy..

5 minutes to read. By author Michaela Mora on January 25, 2022 Topics: Relevant Methods & Tips , Business Strategy , Market Research

Secondary research is based on data already collected for purposes other than the specific problem you have. Secondary research is usually part of exploratory market research designs.

The connection between the specific purpose that originates the research is what differentiates secondary research from primary research. Primary research is designed to address specific problems. However, analysis of available secondary data should be a prerequisite to the collection of primary data.

Advantages of Secondary Research

Secondary data can be faster and cheaper to obtain, depending on the sources you use.

Secondary research can help to:

• Answer certain research questions and test some hypotheses.
• Formulate an appropriate research design (e.g., identify key variables).
• Interpret data from primary research as it can provide some insights into general trends in an industry or product category.
• Understand the competitive landscape.

Limitations of Secondary Research

The usefulness of secondary research tends to be limited often for two main reasons:

Lack of relevance

Secondary research rarely provides all the answers you need. The objectives and methodology used to collect the secondary data may not be appropriate for the problem at hand.

Given that it was designed to find answers to a different problem than yours, you will likely find gaps in answers to your problem. Furthermore, the data collection methods used may not provide the data type needed to support the business decisions you have to make (e.g., qualitative research methods are not appropriate for go/no-go decisions).

Lack of Accuracy

Secondary data may be incomplete and lack accuracy depending on;

• The research design (exploratory, descriptive, causal, primary vs. repackaged secondary data, the analytical plan, etc.)
• Sampling design and sources (target audiences, recruitment methods)
• Data collection method (qualitative and quantitative techniques)
• Analysis point of view (focus and omissions)
• Reporting stages (preliminary, final, peer-reviewed)
• Rate of change in the studied topic (slowly vs. rapidly evolving phenomenon, e.g., adoption of specific technologies).
• Lack of agreement between data sources.

Criteria for Evaluating Secondary Research Data

Before taking the information at face value, you should conduct a thorough evaluation of the secondary data you find using the following criteria:

• Purpose : Understanding why the data was collected and what questions it was trying to answer will tell us how relevant and useful it is since it may or may not be appropriate for your objectives.
• Methodology used to collect the data : Important to understand sources of bias.
• Accuracy of data: Sources of errors may include research design, sampling, data collection, analysis, and reporting.
• When the data was collected : Secondary data may not be current or updated frequently enough for the purpose that you need.
• Content of the data : Understanding the key variables, units of measurement, categories used and analyzed relationships may reveal how useful and relevant it is for your purposes.
• Source reputation : In the era of purposeful misinformation on the Internet, it is important to check the expertise, credibility, reputation, and trustworthiness of the data source.

Secondary Research Data Sources

Compared to primary research, the collection of secondary data can be faster and cheaper to obtain, depending on the sources you use.

Secondary data can come from internal or external sources.

Internal sources of secondary data include ready-to-use data or data that requires further processing available in internal management support systems your company may be using (e.g., invoices, sales transactions, Google Analytics for your website, etc.).

Prior primary qualitative and quantitative research conducted by the company are also common sources of secondary data. They often generate more questions and help formulate new primary research needed.

However, if there are no internal data collection systems yet or prior research, you probably won’t have much usable secondary data at your disposal.

External sources of secondary data include:

• Published materials
• External databases
• Syndicated services.

Published Materials

Published materials can be classified as:

• General business sources: Guides, directories, indexes, and statistical data.
• Government sources: Census data and other government publications.

External Databases

In many industries across a variety of topics, there are private and public databases that can bed accessed online or by downloading data for free, a fixed fee, or a subscription.

These databases can include bibliographic, numeric, full-text, directory, and special-purpose databases. Some public institutions make data collected through various methods, including surveys, available for others to analyze.

Syndicated Services

These services are offered by companies that collect and sell pools of data that have a commercial value and meet shared needs by a number of clients, even if the data is not collected for specific purposes those clients may have.

Syndicated services can be classified based on specific units of measurements (e.g., consumers, households, organizations, etc.).

The data collection methods for these data may include:

• Surveys (Psychographic and Lifestyle, advertising evaluations, general topics)
• Household panels (Purchase and media use)
• Electronic scanner services (volume tracking data, scanner panels, scanner panels with Cable TV)
• Audits (retailers, wholesalers)
• Direct inquiries to institutions
• Clipping services tracking PR for institutions
• Corporate reports

You can spend hours doing research on Google in search of external sources, but this is likely to yield limited insights. Books, articles journals, reports, blogs posts, and videos you may find online are usually analyses and summaries of data from a particular perspective. They may be useful and give you an indication of the type of data used, but they are not the actual data. Whenever possible, you should look at the actual raw data used to draw your own conclusion on its value for your research objectives. You should check professionally gathered secondary research.

Here are some external secondary data sources often used in market research that you may find useful as starting points in your research. Some are free, while others require payment.

• Pew Research Center : Reports about the issues, attitudes, and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis, and other empirical social science research.
• Data.Census.gov : Data dissemination platform to access demographic and economic data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
• Data.gov : The US. government’s open data source with almost 200,00 datasets ranges in topics from health, agriculture, climate, ecosystems, public safety, finance, energy, manufacturing, education, and business.
• Google Scholar : A web search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines.
• Google Public Data Explorer : Makes large, public-interest datasets easy to explore, visualize and communicate.
• Google News Archive : Allows users to search historical newspapers and retrieve scanned images of their pages.
• Mckinsey & Company : Articles based on analyses of various industries.
• Statista : Business data platform with data across 170+ industries and 150+ countries.
• Claritas : Syndicated reports on various market segments.
• Mintel : Consumer reports combining exclusive consumer research with other market data and expert analysis.
• MarketResearch.com : Data aggregator with over 350 publishers covering every sector of the economy as well as emerging industries.
• Packaged Facts : Reports based on market research on consumer goods and services industries.
• Dun & Bradstreet : Company directory with business information.

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• What is Secondary Research? | Definition, Types, & Examples

What is Secondary Research? | Definition, Types, & Examples

Published on January 20, 2023 by Tegan George . Revised on January 12, 2024.

Secondary research is a research method that uses data that was collected by someone else. In other words, whenever you conduct research using data that already exists, you are conducting secondary research. On the other hand, any type of research that you undertake yourself is called primary research .

Secondary research can be qualitative or quantitative in nature. It often uses data gathered from published peer-reviewed papers, meta-analyses, or government or private sector databases and datasets.

Table of contents

When to use secondary research, types of secondary research, examples of secondary research, advantages and disadvantages of secondary research, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions.

Secondary research is a very common research method, used in lieu of collecting your own primary data. It is often used in research designs or as a way to start your research process if you plan to conduct primary research later on.

Since it is often inexpensive or free to access, secondary research is a low-stakes way to determine if further primary research is needed, as gaps in secondary research are a strong indication that primary research is necessary. For this reason, while secondary research can theoretically be exploratory or explanatory in nature, it is usually explanatory: aiming to explain the causes and consequences of a well-defined problem.

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Secondary research can take many forms, but the most common types are:

Statistical analysis

Literature reviews, case studies, content analysis.

There is ample data available online from a variety of sources, often in the form of datasets. These datasets are often open-source or downloadable at a low cost, and are ideal for conducting statistical analyses such as hypothesis testing or regression analysis .

Credible sources for existing data include:

• The government
• Government agencies
• Non-governmental organizations
• Educational institutions
• Businesses or consultancies
• Libraries or archives
• Newspapers, academic journals, or magazines

A literature review is a survey of preexisting scholarly sources on your topic. It provides an overview of current knowledge, allowing you to identify relevant themes, debates, and gaps in the research you analyze. You can later apply these to your own work, or use them as a jumping-off point to conduct primary research of your own.

Structured much like a regular academic paper (with a clear introduction, body, and conclusion), a literature review is a great way to evaluate the current state of research and demonstrate your knowledge of the scholarly debates around your topic.

A case study is a detailed study of a specific subject. It is usually qualitative in nature and can focus on  a person, group, place, event, organization, or phenomenon. A case study is a great way to utilize existing research to gain concrete, contextual, and in-depth knowledge about your real-world subject.

You can choose to focus on just one complex case, exploring a single subject in great detail, or examine multiple cases if you’d prefer to compare different aspects of your topic. Preexisting interviews , observational studies , or other sources of primary data make for great case studies.

Content analysis is a research method that studies patterns in recorded communication by utilizing existing texts. It can be either quantitative or qualitative in nature, depending on whether you choose to analyze countable or measurable patterns, or more interpretive ones. Content analysis is popular in communication studies, but it is also widely used in historical analysis, anthropology, and psychology to make more semantic qualitative inferences.

Secondary research is a broad research approach that can be pursued any way you’d like. Here are a few examples of different ways you can use secondary research to explore your research topic .

Secondary research is a very common research approach, but has distinct advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages of secondary research

Advantages include:

• Secondary data is very easy to source and readily available .
• It is also often free or accessible through your educational institution’s library or network, making it much cheaper to conduct than primary research .
• As you are relying on research that already exists, conducting secondary research is much less time consuming than primary research. Since your timeline is so much shorter, your research can be ready to publish sooner.
• Using data from others allows you to show reproducibility and replicability , bolstering prior research and situating your own work within your field.

Disadvantages of secondary research

Disadvantages include:

• Ease of access does not signify credibility . It’s important to be aware that secondary research is not always reliable , and can often be out of date. It’s critical to analyze any data you’re thinking of using prior to getting started, using a method like the CRAAP test .
• Secondary research often relies on primary research already conducted. If this original research is biased in any way, those research biases could creep into the secondary results.

Many researchers using the same secondary research to form similar conclusions can also take away from the uniqueness and reliability of your research. Many datasets become “kitchen-sink” models, where too many variables are added in an attempt to draw increasingly niche conclusions from overused data . Data cleansing may be necessary to test the quality of the research.

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If you want to know more about statistics , methodology , or research bias , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

• Normal distribution
• Degrees of freedom
• Null hypothesis
• Discourse analysis
• Control groups
• Mixed methods research
• Non-probability sampling
• Quantitative research
• Inclusion and exclusion criteria

Research bias

• Rosenthal effect
• Implicit bias
• Cognitive bias
• Selection bias
• Negativity bias
• Status quo bias

A systematic review is secondary research because it uses existing research. You don’t collect new data yourself.

The research methods you use depend on the type of data you need to answer your research question .

• If you want to measure something or test a hypothesis , use quantitative methods . If you want to explore ideas, thoughts and meanings, use qualitative methods .
• If you want to analyze a large amount of readily-available data, use secondary data. If you want data specific to your purposes with control over how it is generated, collect primary data.
• If you want to establish cause-and-effect relationships between variables , use experimental methods. If you want to understand the characteristics of a research subject, use descriptive methods.

Quantitative research deals with numbers and statistics, while qualitative research deals with words and meanings.

Quantitative methods allow you to systematically measure variables and test hypotheses . Qualitative methods allow you to explore concepts and experiences in more detail.

Sources in this article

We strongly encourage students to use sources in their work. You can cite our article (APA Style) or take a deep dive into the articles below.

George, T. (2024, January 12). What is Secondary Research? | Definition, Types, & Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved September 16, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/methodology/secondary-research/

Largan, C., & Morris, T. M. (2019). Qualitative Secondary Research: A Step-By-Step Guide (1st ed.). SAGE Publications Ltd.

Peloquin, D., DiMaio, M., Bierer, B., & Barnes, M. (2020). Disruptive and avoidable: GDPR challenges to secondary research uses of data. European Journal of Human Genetics , 28 (6), 697–705. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41431-020-0596-x

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Advantages and Disadvantages of Secondary Research

Table of Contents

What is secondary research.

• Q.1 What is the one thing that describes Secondary research? 
• Q.2 What can be considered sources for Secondary research? 
• Q.3 What methods can be used to understand that secondary data is of high quality? 

Q.4 When we should consider secondary research?

• Q.5 Does primary research have the ability to replace secondary research? 

Before moving towards understanding the advantages and disadvantages of secondary research, let’s get an overview of what is Secondary research, Secondary research or we can also call it “Desk Research”, basically secondary research can be understood by its name, as secondary defined using the research which is already been published by another person. Lots of thesis and dissertation getting done by Dissertation Helper using secondary research.

Secondary research is never first-hand research, already collected, analyzed, and published data or information is considered secondary research. To write assignment's first page even, we need to know how to do research.

Here are two types of research (Primary and Secondary Research) that have the same two types of sources for collecting the information: internal and other is External. In the case of secondary research, internal sources are found within the industry or company only, for example, previously recorded data of a company, previous Annual year reports, and external sources, these sources are found in the external world, Government databases, online published articles, and news published articles. 

In the UK, students who are pursuing graduation or post-graduation search for the disadvantages and advantages of secondary sources, but somehow students can’t do the research because of a lack of research problems, therefore they opt for Assignment Writing Services in UK .

In the table, we provide all the advantages and disadvantages of secondary research. In the academic journey students, they need to complete the assignments, and dissertations on time. Therefore they should know how to write references in a dissertation , this shows the main source where you got the information for the particular topic you write.

Here are some points that explain the advantages and disadvantages of secondary research. 

Secondary research is one of the two types of research that is used while researching a field or on a topic. Secondary research provides with variety of advantages and disadvantages, as discussed in this article the advantages of secondary research include the value of money, time effectiveness, the Opportunity to get vast information, comparing the multiple sources that are found while doing secondary research, and getting verified data/information. Secondary research provides all these advantages to the one who using secondary for their research but it’s not that it comes only comes advantages, it has its own disadvantages as well, as secondary research can’t be completely trusted. Disadvantages of secondary research include lack of specification, outdated information, poor quality of information, limited quality of data, and Limited in-depth analysis. 

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Here are the most asked questions on Google.

Q.1 What is the one thing that describes Secondary research? 

Ans. The one thing that completely describes secondary research, is using the data or information, for research that is already been published by others. UK-based experts mostly use secondary research to provide academic thesis and  essay writing services .

Q.2 What can be considered sources for Secondary research? 

Ans. Official Government reports or datasets, industry-published articles, databases that are available online, and even academic journals. 

Q.3 What methods can be used to understand that secondary data is of high quality? 

Ans. Methods that must make sure the data is of high quality require checking on the credibility of the information, originality of the information that is been used in the research, and relevance of data in reference to the topic of the research.

Ans. Consider using secondary research when the budget and timeline of the research is limited, also you must opt for secondary research when the topic or field of research is common and not that unique and different.  

Q.5 Does primary research have the ability to replace secondary research? 

Ans. The answer to this question, neither primary research nor primary research can replace the other one, as both of their own importance, the disadvantages of secondary research can be solved in primary research and the disadvantages of primary research can be solved by using secondary research. So, for perfect research, one would require both types of research. 

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Stating the Obvious: Writing Assumptions, Limitations, and Delimitations

During the process of writing your thesis or dissertation, you might suddenly realize that your research has inherent flaws. Don’t worry! Virtually all projects contain restrictions to your research. However, being able to recognize and accurately describe these problems is the difference between a true researcher and a grade-school kid with a science-fair project. Concerns with truthful responding, access to participants, and survey instruments are just a few of examples of restrictions on your research. In the following sections, the differences among delimitations, limitations, and assumptions of a dissertation will be clarified.

Delimitations

Delimitations are the definitions you set as the boundaries of your own thesis or dissertation, so delimitations are in your control. Delimitations are set so that your goals do not become impossibly large to complete. Examples of delimitations include objectives, research questions, variables, theoretical objectives that you have adopted, and populations chosen as targets to study. When you are stating your delimitations, clearly inform readers why you chose this course of study. The answer might simply be that you were curious about the topic and/or wanted to improve standards of a professional field by revealing certain findings. In any case, you should clearly list the other options available and the reasons why you did not choose these options immediately after you list your delimitations. You might have avoided these options for reasons of practicality, interest, or relativity to the study at hand. For example, you might have only studied Hispanic mothers because they have the highest rate of obese babies. Delimitations are often strongly related to your theory and research questions. If you were researching whether there are different parenting styles between unmarried Asian, Caucasian, African American, and Hispanic women, then a delimitation of your study would be the inclusion of only participants with those demographics and the exclusion of participants from other demographics such as men, married women, and all other ethnicities of single women (inclusion and exclusion criteria). A further delimitation might be that you only included closed-ended Likert scale responses in the survey, rather than including additional open-ended responses, which might make some people more willing to take and complete your survey. Remember that delimitations are not good or bad. They are simply a detailed description of the scope of interest for your study as it relates to the research design. Don’t forget to describe the philosophical framework you used throughout your study, which also delimits your study.

Limitations

Limitations of a dissertation are potential weaknesses in your study that are mostly out of your control, given limited funding, choice of research design, statistical model constraints, or other factors. In addition, a limitation is a restriction on your study that cannot be reasonably dismissed and can affect your design and results. Do not worry about limitations because limitations affect virtually all research projects, as well as most things in life. Even when you are going to your favorite restaurant, you are limited by the menu choices. If you went to a restaurant that had a menu that you were craving, you might not receive the service, price, or location that makes you enjoy your favorite restaurant. If you studied participants’ responses to a survey, you might be limited in your abilities to gain the exact type or geographic scope of participants you wanted. The people whom you managed to get to take your survey may not truly be a random sample, which is also a limitation. If you used a common test for data findings, your results are limited by the reliability of the test. If your study was limited to a certain amount of time, your results are affected by the operations of society during that time period (e.g., economy, social trends). It is important for you to remember that limitations of a dissertation are often not something that can be solved by the researcher. Also, remember that whatever limits you also limits other researchers, whether they are the largest medical research companies or consumer habits corporations. Certain kinds of limitations are often associated with the analytical approach you take in your research, too. For example, some qualitative methods like heuristics or phenomenology do not lend themselves well to replicability. Also, most of the commonly used quantitative statistical models can only determine correlation, but not causation.

Assumptions

Assumptions are things that are accepted as true, or at least plausible, by researchers and peers who will read your dissertation or thesis. In other words, any scholar reading your paper will assume that certain aspects of your study is true given your population, statistical test, research design, or other delimitations. For example, if you tell your friend that your favorite restaurant is an Italian place, your friend will assume that you don’t go there for the sushi. It’s assumed that you go there to eat Italian food. Because most assumptions are not discussed in-text, assumptions that are discussed in-text are discussed in the context of the limitations of your study, which is typically in the discussion section. This is important, because both assumptions and limitations affect the inferences you can draw from your study. One of the more common assumptions made in survey research is the assumption of honesty and truthful responses. However, for certain sensitive questions this assumption may be more difficult to accept, in which case it would be described as a limitation of the study. For example, asking people to report their criminal behavior in a survey may not be as reliable as asking people to report their eating habits. It is important to remember that your limitations and assumptions should not contradict one another. For instance, if you state that generalizability is a limitation of your study given that your sample was limited to one city in the United States, then you should not claim generalizability to the United States population as an assumption of your study. Statistical models in quantitative research designs are accompanied with assumptions as well, some more strict than others. These assumptions generally refer to the characteristics of the data, such as distributions, correlational trends, and variable type, just to name a few. Violating these assumptions can lead to drastically invalid results, though this often depends on sample size and other considerations.

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Secondary Research: Definition, Methods, Sources, Examples, and More

Table of Contents

What is Secondary Research? Secondary Research Meaning

Secondary research involves the analysis and synthesis of existing data and information that has been previously collected and published by others. This method contrasts with primary research , which entails the direct collection of original data from sources like surveys, interviews, and ethnographic studies.

The essence of secondary research lies in its efficiency and accessibility. Researchers who leverage secondary sources, including books, scholarly articles, government reports, and market analyses, gather valuable insights without the need for time-consuming and costly data collection efforts. This approach is particularly vital in marketing research, where understanding broad market trends and consumer behaviors is essential, yet often constrained by budgets and timelines. Secondary research serves as a fundamental step in the research process, providing a solid foundation upon which additional, targeted research can be built.

Secondary research enables researchers to quickly grasp the landscape of existing knowledge, identify gaps in the literature, and refine their research questions or business strategies accordingly. In marketing research, for instance, secondary research aids in understanding competitive landscapes, identifying market trends, and benchmarking against industry standards, thereby guiding strategic decision-making.

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When to Use Secondary Research

Choosing between secondary and primary research methods depends significantly on the objectives of your study or project. Secondary research is particularly beneficial in the initial stages of research planning and strategy, offering a broad understanding of the topic at hand and helping to pinpoint areas that may require more in-depth investigation through primary methods.

In academic contexts, secondary research is often used to build a theoretical foundation for a study, allowing researchers to position their work within the existing body of knowledge. Professionally, it serves as a cost-effective way to inform business strategies, market analyses, and policy development, providing insights into industry trends, consumer behaviors, and competitive landscapes.

Combining secondary research with primary research methods enhances the comprehensiveness and validity of research findings. For example, secondary research might reveal general trends in consumer behavior, while subsequent primary research could delve into specific consumer motivations and preferences, offering a more nuanced understanding of the market.

Key considerations for integrating secondary research into your research planning and strategy include:

• Research Objectives : Clearly defining what you aim to discover or decide based on your research.
• Availability of Data : Assessing the extent and relevance of existing data related to your research question.
• Budget and Time Constraints : Considering the resources available for conducting research, including time, money, and personnel.
• Research Scope : Determining the breadth and depth of the information needed to meet your research objectives.

Secondary research is a powerful tool when used strategically, providing a cost-effective, efficient way to gather insights and inform decision-making processes across academic and professional contexts.

How to Conduct Secondary Research

Conducting secondary research is a systematic process that involves several key steps to ensure the relevance, accuracy, and utility of the information gathered. Here's a step-by-step guide to effective secondary research:

• Identifying Research Objectives, Topics, and Questions : Begin with a clear understanding of what you aim to achieve with your research. This includes defining your research objectives, topics, and specific questions you seek to answer. This clarity guides the entire research process, ensuring that you remain focused on relevant information.
• Finding Relevant Data Sources : Search for secondary data sources that are likely to contain the information you need. This involves exploring a variety of sources such as academic journals, industry reports, government databases, and news archives. Prioritize sources known for their credibility and authority in the subject matter.
• Collecting and Verifying Existing Data : Once you've identified potential sources, collect the data that pertains to your research questions. Pay close attention to the publication date, authorship, and the methodology used in collecting the original data to ensure its relevance and reliability.
• Data Compilation and Analysis : Compile the collected data in a structured format that allows for analysis. Employ analytical methods suited to your research objectives, such as trend analysis, comparative analysis, or thematic analysis, to draw insights from the data.

The success of secondary research hinges on the critical evaluation of sources for their credibility, relevance, and timeliness. It's essential to approach this process with a discerning eye, acknowledging the limitations of secondary data and the potential need for further investigation through primary research.

Types of Secondary Research Methods with Examples

Secondary research methods offer a range of approaches for leveraging existing data, each providing value in extracting insights relevant to various business and academic needs. Understanding the unique advantages of each method can guide researchers in choosing the most appropriate approach for their specific objectives.

Literature Reviews

Literature reviews synthesize existing research and publications to identify trends, gaps, and consensus within a field of study. This method provides a comprehensive overview of what is already known about a topic, saving time and resources by building on existing knowledge rather than starting from scratch.

Real-World Example : A marketing firm conducting a literature review on consumer behavior in the digital age might uncover a trend towards increased mobile shopping. This insight leads to a strategic recommendation for a retail client to prioritize mobile app development and optimize their online store for mobile users, directly impacting the client's digital marketing strategy.

Data Mining

Data mining involves analyzing large sets of data to discover patterns, correlations, or trends that are not immediately apparent. This method can uncover hidden insights from the data that businesses can use to inform decision-making, such as identifying new market opportunities or optimizing operational efficiencies.

Real-World Example : Through data mining of customer purchase histories and online behavior data, a retail company identifies a previously unnoticed correlation between the purchase of certain products and the time of year. Utilizing this insight, the company adjusts its inventory levels and marketing campaigns seasonally, significantly boosting sales and customer satisfaction.

Meta-Analysis

Meta-analysis aggregates and systematically analyzes results from multiple studies to draw general conclusions about a research question. This method provides a high level of evidence by combining findings, offering a powerful tool for making informed decisions based on a broader range of data than any single study could provide.

Real-World Example : A pharmaceutical company uses meta-analysis to combine findings from various clinical trials of a new drug. The meta-analysis reveals a statistically significant benefit of the drug that was not conclusive in individual studies. This insight supports the company's application for regulatory approval and guides the development of marketing strategies targeting specific patient demographics.

Data Analysis

Secondary data analysis applies statistical techniques to analyze existing datasets, offering a cost-effective way to gain insights without the need for new data collection. This method can identify trends, patterns, and relationships that inform strategic planning and decision-making.

Real-World Example : An investment firm analyzes historical economic data and stock market trends using secondary data analysis. They identify a recurring pattern preceding market downturns. By applying this insight to their investment strategy, the firm successfully mitigates risk and enhances portfolio performance for their clients.

Content Analysis

Content analysis systematically examines the content of communication mediums to understand messages, themes, or biases . This qualitative method can reveal insights into public opinion, media representation, and communication strategies, offering valuable information for marketing, public relations, and media strategies.

Real-World Example : A technology company employs content analysis to review online customer reviews and social media mentions of its products. The analysis uncovers a common concern among customers about the usability of a product feature. Responding to this insight, the company revises its product design and launches a targeted communication campaign to address the concerns, improving customer satisfaction and brand perception.

Historical Research

Historical research examines past records and documents to understand historical contexts and trends, offering insights that can inform future predictions, strategy development, and understanding of long-term changes. This method is particularly valuable for understanding the evolution of markets, industries, or consumer behaviors over time.

Real-World Example : A consultancy specializing in sustainable business practices conducts historical research into the adoption of green technologies in the automotive industry. The research identifies key drivers and barriers to adoption over the decades. Leveraging these insights, the consultancy advises new green tech startups on strategies to overcome market resistance and capitalize on drivers of adoption, significantly impacting their market entry strategy.

Each of these secondary research methods provides distinct advantages and can yield valuable insights for businesses and researchers. By carefully selecting and applying the most suitable method(s), organizations can enhance their understanding of complex issues, inform strategic decisions, and achieve competitive advantage.

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Examples of Secondary Sources in Research

Secondary sources are crucial for researchers across disciplines, offering a wealth of information that can provide insights, support hypotheses, and inform strategies. Understanding the unique value of different types of secondary sources can help researchers effectively harness this wealth of information. Below, we explore various secondary sources, highlighting their unique contributions and providing real-world examples of how they can yield valuable business insights.

Books provide comprehensive coverage of a topic, offering depth and context that shorter pieces might miss. They are particularly useful for gaining a thorough understanding of a subject's historical background and theoretical framework.

Example : A corporation exploring the feasibility of entering a new international market utilizes books on the country's cultural and economic history. This deep dive helps the company understand market nuances, leading to a tailored market entry strategy that aligns with local consumer preferences and cultural norms.

Scholarly Journals

Scholarly journals offer peer-reviewed, cutting-edge research findings, making them invaluable for staying abreast of the latest developments in a field. They provide detailed methodologies, rigorous data analysis, and discussions of findings in a specific area of study.

Example : An investment firm relies on scholarly articles to understand recent advancements in financial technology. Discovering research on blockchain's impact on transaction security and efficiency, the firm decides to invest in fintech startups specializing in blockchain technology, positioning itself ahead in the market.

Government Reports

Government reports deliver authoritative data on a wide range of topics, including economic indicators, demographic trends, and regulatory guidelines. Their reliability and the breadth of topics covered make them an essential resource for informed decision-making.

Example : A healthcare provider examines government health reports to identify trends in public health issues. Spotting an increase in lifestyle-related diseases, the provider expands its wellness programs, directly addressing the growing demand for preventive care services.

Market Research Reports

Market research reports provide insights into industry trends, consumer behavior, and competitive landscapes. These reports are invaluable for making informed business decisions, from product development to marketing strategies.

Example : A consumer goods company reviews market research reports to analyze trends in eco-friendly packaging. Learning about the positive consumer response to sustainable packaging, the company redesigns its packaging to be more environmentally friendly, resulting in increased brand loyalty and market share.

White Papers

White papers offer in-depth analysis or arguments on specific issues, often highlighting solutions or innovations. They are a key resource for understanding complex problems, technological advancements, and industry best practices.

Example : A technology firm exploring the implementation of AI in customer service operations consults white papers on AI applications. Insights from these papers guide the development of an AI-powered customer service chatbot, enhancing efficiency and customer satisfaction.

Private Company Data

Data from private companies, such as annual reports or case studies, provides insight into business strategies, performance metrics, and operational challenges. This information can be instrumental in benchmarking and strategic planning.

Example : By analyzing competitor annual reports, a retail chain identifies a gap in the market for affordable luxury products. This insight leads to the launch of a new product line that successfully captures this underserved segment, boosting the company's revenue and market positioning.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Secondary Research

Secondary research offers a foundation upon which organizations can build their knowledge base, informing everything from strategic planning to day-to-day decision-making. However, like any method, it comes with its own set of advantages and disadvantages. Understanding these can help researchers and businesses make the most of secondary research while being mindful of its limitations.

Advantages of Secondary Research

• Cost-Effectiveness : Secondary research is often less expensive than primary research, as it involves the analysis of existing data, eliminating the need for costly data collection processes like surveys or experiments.
• Time Efficiency : Accessing and analyzing existing data is generally faster than conducting primary research, allowing organizations to make timely decisions based on available information.
• Broad Scope of Data : Secondary research provides access to a wide range of data across different geographies and time periods, enabling comprehensive market analyses and trend identification.
• Basis for Primary Research : It can serve as a preliminary step to identify gaps in existing research, helping to pinpoint areas where primary research is needed.

Disadvantages of Secondary Research

• Relevance and Specificity : Existing data may not perfectly align with the current research objectives, leading to potential mismatches in relevance and specificity.
• Data Quality and Accuracy : The quality and accuracy of secondary data can vary, depending on the source. Researchers must critically assess the credibility of their sources to ensure the reliability of their findings.
• Timeliness : Data may be outdated, especially in fast-moving sectors where recent information is crucial for making informed decisions.
• Limited Control Over Data : Researchers have no control over how data was collected and processed, which may affect its suitability for their specific research needs.

Secondary research, when approached with an understanding of its strengths and weaknesses, has the potential be a powerful tool. By effectively navigating its advantages and limitations, businesses can lay a solid foundation for informed decision-making and strategic planning.

Primary vs. Secondary Research: A Comparative Analysis

When undertaking a research project, understanding the distinction between primary and secondary research is pivotal. Both forms of research serve their own purposes and can complement each other in providing a comprehensive overview of a given topic.

What is Primary Research?

Primary research involves the collection of original data directly from sources. This method is firsthand and is specific to the researcher's questions or hypotheses.

The main advantage of primary research is its specificity and relevancy to the particular issue or question at hand. It offers up-to-date and highly relevant data that is directly applicable to the research objectives.

Example : A company planning to launch a new beverage product conducts focus groups and survey research to understand consumer preferences. Through this process, they gather firsthand insights on flavors, packaging, and pricing preferences specific to their target market.

What is Secondary Research?

Secondary research involves the analysis of existing information compiled and collected by others. It includes studies, reports, and data from government agencies, trade associations, and other organizations.

Secondary research provides a broad understanding of the topic at hand, offering insights that can help frame primary research. It is cost-effective and time-saving, as it leverages already available data.

Example : The same company explores industry reports, academic research, and market analyses to understand broader market trends, competitor strategies, and consumer behavior within the beverage industry.

Comparative Analysis

Synergistic Use in Research

The most effective research strategies often involve a blend of both primary and secondary research. Secondary research can serve as a foundation, helping to inform the development of primary research by identifying gaps in existing knowledge and refining research questions.

Understanding the distinct roles and benefits of primary and secondary research is crucial for any successful research project. By effectively leveraging both types of research, researchers can gain a deeper, more nuanced understanding of their subject matter, leading to more informed decisions and strategies. Remember, the choice between primary and secondary research should be guided by your research objectives, resources, and the specificity of information required.

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Research Methods

Secondary research.

• Primary Research

What is Secondary Research?

Advantages and disadvantages of secondary research, secondary research in literature reviews, secondary research - going beyond literature reviews, main stages of secondary research, useful resources, using material on this page.

• Quantitative Research This link opens in a new window
• Qualitative Research This link opens in a new window
• Being Critical This link opens in a new window
• Subject LibGuides This link opens in a new window

Secondary research

Secondary research uses research and data that has already been carried out. It is sometimes referred to as desk research. It is a good starting point for any type of research as it enables you to analyse what research has already been undertaken and identify any gaps. 

You may only need to carry out secondary research for your assessment or you may need to use secondary research as a starting point, before undertaking your own primary research .

Searching for both primary and secondary sources can help to ensure that you are up to date with what research has already been carried out in your area of interest and to identify the key researchers in the field.

"Secondary sources are the books, articles, papers and similar materials written or produced by others that help you to form your background understanding of the subject. You would use these to find out about experts’ findings, analyses or perspectives on the issue and decide whether to draw upon these explicitly in your research." (Cottrell, 2014, p. 123).

Examples of secondary research sources include:.

• journal articles
• official statistics, such as government reports or organisations which have collected and published data

Primary research  involves gathering data which has not been collected before. Methods to collect it can include interviews, focus groups, controlled trials and case studies. Secondary research often comments on and analyses this primary research.

Gopalakrishnan and Ganeshkumar (2013, p. 10) explain the difference between primary and secondary research:

"Primary research is collecting data directly from patients or population, while secondary research is the analysis of data already collected through primary research. A review is an article that summarizes a number of primary studies and may draw conclusions on the topic of interest which can be traditional (unsystematic) or systematic".

Secondary Data

As secondary data has already been collected by someone else for their research purposes, it may not cover all of the areas of interest for your research topic. This research will need to be analysed alongside other research sources and data in the same subject area in order to confirm, dispute or discuss the findings in a wider context.

"Secondary source data, as the name infers, provides second-hand information. The data come ‘pre-packaged’, their form and content reflecting the fact that they have been produced by someone other than the researcher and will not have been produced specifically for the purpose of the research project. The data, none the less, will have some relevance for the research in terms of the information they contain, and the task for the researcher is to extract that information and re-use it in the context of his/her own research project." (Denscombe, 2021, p. 268)

In the video below Dr. Benedict Wheeler (Senior Research Fellow at the European Center for Environment and Human Health at the University of Exeter Medical School) discusses secondary data analysis. Secondary data was used for his research on how the environment affects health and well-being and utilising this secondary data gave access to a larger data set.

As with all research, an important part of the process is to critically evaluate any sources you use. There are tools to help with this in the  Being Critical  section of the guide.

Louise Corti, from the UK Data Archive, discusses using secondary data  in the video below. T he importance of evaluating secondary research is discussed - this is to ensure the data is appropriate for your research and to investigate how the data was collected.

There are advantages and disadvantages to secondary research:

Advantages:

• Usually low cost
• Easily accessible
• Provides background information to clarify / refine research areas
• Increases breadth of knowledge
• Shows different examples of research methods
• Can highlight gaps in the research and potentially outline areas of difficulty
• Can incorporate a wide range of data
• Allows you to identify opposing views and supporting arguments for your research topic
• Highlights the key researchers and work which is being undertaken within the subject area
• Helps to put your research topic into perspective

Disadvantages

• Can be out of date
• Might be unreliable if it is not clear where or how the research has been collected - remember to think critically
• May not be applicable to your specific research question as the aims will have had a different focus

Literature reviews 

Secondary research for your major project may take the form of a literature review . this is where you will outline the main research which has already been written on your topic. this might include theories and concepts connected with your topic and it should also look to see if there are any gaps in the research., as the criteria and guidance will differ for each school, it is important that you check the guidance which you have been given for your assessment. this may be in blackboard and you can also check with your supervisor..

The videos below include some insights from academics regarding the importance of literature reviews.

Secondary research which goes beyond literature reviews

For some dissertations/major projects there might only be a literature review (discussed above ). For others there could be a literature review followed by primary research and for others the literature review might be followed by further secondary research. 

You may be asked to write a literature review which will form a background chapter to give context to your project and provide the necessary history for the research topic. However, you may then also be expected to produce the rest of your project using additional secondary research methods, which will need to produce results and findings which are distinct from the background chapter t o avoid repetition .

Remember, as the criteria and guidance will differ for each School, it is important that you check the guidance which you have been given for your assessment. This may be in Blackboard and you can also check with your supervisor.

Although this type of secondary research will go beyond a literature review, it will still rely on research which has already been undertaken. And,  "just as in primary research, secondary research designs can be either quantitative, qualitative, or a mixture of both strategies of inquiry" (Manu and Akotia, 2021, p. 4).

Your secondary research may use the literature review to focus on a specific theme, which is then discussed further in the main project. Or it may use an alternative approach. Some examples are included below.  Remember to speak with your supervisor if you are struggling to define these areas.

Some approaches of how to conduct secondary research include:

• A systematic review is a structured literature review that involves identifying all of the relevant primary research using a rigorous search strategy to answer a focused research question.
• This involves comprehensive searching which is used to identify themes or concepts across a number of relevant studies. 
• The review will assess the q uality of the research and provide a summary and synthesis of all relevant available research on the topic.
• The systematic review  guide goes into more detail about this process (The guide is aimed a PhD/Researcher students. However, students on other levels of study may find parts of the guide helpful too).
• Scoping reviews aim to identify and assess available research on a specific topic (which can include ongoing research). 
• They are "particularly useful when a body of literature has not yet been comprehensively reviewed, or exhibits a complex or heterogeneous nature not amenable to a more precise systematic review of the evidence. While scoping reviews may be conducted to determine the value and probable scope of a full systematic review, they may also be undertaken as exercises in and of themselves to summarize and disseminate research findings, to identify research gaps, and to make recommendations for the future research."  (Peters et al., 2015) .
• This is designed to  summarise the current knowledge and provide priorities for future research.
• "A state-of-the-art review will often highlight new ideas or gaps in research with no official quality assessment." ( MacAdden, 2020).
• "Bibliometric analysis is a popular and rigorous method for exploring and analyzing large volumes of scientific data." (Donthu et al., 2021)
• Quantitative methods and statistics are used to analyse the bibliographic data of published literature. This can be used to measure the impact of authors, publications, or topics within a subject area.

The bibliometric analysis often uses the data from a citation source such as Scopus or Web of Science .

• This is a technique used to combine the statistic results of prior quantitative studies in order to increase precision and validity.
• "It goes beyond the parameters of a literature review, which assesses existing literature, to actually perform calculations based on the results collated, thereby coming up with new results" (Curtis and Curtis, 2011, p. 220)

(Adapted from: Grant and Booth, 2009, cited in Sarhan and Manu, 2021, p. 72)

• Grounded Theory is used to create explanatory theory from data which has been collected.
• "Grounded theory data analysis strategies can be used with different types of data, including secondary data." (Whiteside, Mills and McCalman, 2012)
• This allows you to use a specific theory or theories which can then be applied to your chosen topic/research area.
• You could focus on one case study which is analysed in depth, or you could examine more than one in order to compare and contrast the important aspects of your research question.
• "Good case studies often begin with a predicament that is poorly comprehended and is inadequately explained or traditionally rationalised by numerous conflicting accounts. Therefore, the aim is to comprehend an existent problem and to use the acquired understandings to develop new theoretical outlooks or explanations."  (Papachroni and Lochrie, 2015, p. 81)

Main stages of secondary research for a dissertation/major project

In general, the main stages for conducting secondary research for your dissertation or major project will include:

Click on the image below to access the reading list which includes resources used in this guide as well as some additional useful resources.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License .

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How To Do Secondary Research or a Literature Review

What is secondary research, why is secondary research important.

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Secondary research, also known as a literature review , preliminary research , historical research , background research , desk research , or library research , is research that analyzes or describes prior research. Rather than generating and analyzing new data, secondary research analyzes existing research results to establish the boundaries of knowledge on a topic, to identify trends or new practices, to test mathematical models or train machine learning systems, or to verify facts and figures. Secondary research is also used to justify the need for primary research as well as to justify and support other activities. For example, secondary research may be used to support a proposal to modernize a manufacturing plant, to justify the use of newly a developed treatment for cancer, to strengthen a business proposal, or to validate points made in a speech.

Because secondary research is used for so many purposes in so many settings, all professionals will be required to perform it at some point in their careers. For managers and entrepreneurs, regardless of the industry or profession, secondary research is a regular part of worklife, although parts of the research, such as finding the supporting documents, are often delegated to juniors in the organization. For all these reasons, it is essential to learn how to conduct secondary research, even if you are unlikely to ever conduct primary research.

Secondary research is also essential if your main goal is primary research. Research funding is obtained only by using secondary research to show the need for the primary research you want to conduct. In fact, primary research depends on secondary research to prove that it is indeed new and original research and not just a rehash or replication of somebody else’s work.

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Dissertations 4: methodology: methods.

• Introduction & Philosophy
• Methodology

Primary & Secondary Sources, Primary & Secondary Data

When describing your research methods, you can start by stating what kind of secondary and, if applicable, primary sources you used in your research. Explain why you chose such sources, how well they served your research, and identify possible issues encountered using these sources.  

Definitions  

There is some confusion on the use of the terms primary and secondary sources, and primary and secondary data. The confusion is also due to disciplinary differences (Lombard 2010). Whilst you are advised to consult the research methods literature in your field, we can generalise as follows:  

Secondary sources 

Secondary sources normally include the literature (books and articles) with the experts' findings, analysis and discussions on a certain topic (Cottrell, 2014, p123). Secondary sources often interpret primary sources.  

Primary sources 

Primary sources are "first-hand" information such as raw data, statistics, interviews, surveys, law statutes and law cases. Even literary texts, pictures and films can be primary sources if they are the object of research (rather than, for example, documentaries reporting on something else, in which case they would be secondary sources). The distinction between primary and secondary sources sometimes lies on the use you make of them (Cottrell, 2014, p123). 

Primary data 

Primary data are data (primary sources) you directly obtained through your empirical work (Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill 2015, p316). 

Secondary data 

Secondary data are data (primary sources) that were originally collected by someone else (Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill 2015, p316).   

Comparison between primary and secondary data   

Use  

Virtually all research will use secondary sources, at least as background information. 

Often, especially at the postgraduate level, it will also use primary sources - secondary and/or primary data. The engagement with primary sources is generally appreciated, as less reliant on others' interpretations, and closer to 'facts'. 

The use of primary data, as opposed to secondary data, demonstrates the researcher's effort to do empirical work and find evidence to answer her specific research question and fulfill her specific research objectives. Thus, primary data contribute to the originality of the research.    

Ultimately, you should state in this section of the methodology: 

What sources and data you are using and why (how are they going to help you answer the research question and/or test the hypothesis. 

If using primary data, why you employed certain strategies to collect them. 

What the advantages and disadvantages of your strategies to collect the data (also refer to the research in you field and research methods literature). 

Quantitative, Qualitative & Mixed Methods

The methodology chapter should reference your use of quantitative research, qualitative research and/or mixed methods. The following is a description of each along with their advantages and disadvantages. 

Quantitative research 

Quantitative research uses numerical data (quantities) deriving, for example, from experiments, closed questions in surveys, questionnaires, structured interviews or published data sets (Cottrell, 2014, p93). It normally processes and analyses this data using quantitative analysis techniques like tables, graphs and statistics to explore, present and examine relationships and trends within the data (Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, 2015, p496). 

Qualitative research  

Qualitative research is generally undertaken to study human behaviour and psyche. It uses methods like in-depth case studies, open-ended survey questions, unstructured interviews, focus groups, or unstructured observations (Cottrell, 2014, p93). The nature of the data is subjective, and also the analysis of the researcher involves a degree of subjective interpretation. Subjectivity can be controlled for in the research design, or has to be acknowledged as a feature of the research. Subject-specific books on (qualitative) research methods offer guidance on such research designs.  

Mixed methods 

Mixed-method approaches combine both qualitative and quantitative methods, and therefore combine the strengths of both types of research. Mixed methods have gained popularity in recent years.  

When undertaking mixed-methods research you can collect the qualitative and quantitative data either concurrently or sequentially. If sequentially, you can for example, start with a few semi-structured interviews, providing qualitative insights, and then design a questionnaire to obtain quantitative evidence that your qualitative findings can also apply to a wider population (Specht, 2019, p138). 

Ultimately, your methodology chapter should state: 

Whether you used quantitative research, qualitative research or mixed methods. 

Why you chose such methods (and refer to research method sources). 

Why you rejected other methods. 

How well the method served your research. 

The problems or limitations you encountered. 

Doug Specht, Senior Lecturer at the Westminster School of Media and Communication, explains mixed methods research in the following video:

LinkedIn Learning Video on Academic Research Foundations: Quantitative

The video covers the characteristics of quantitative research, and explains how to approach different parts of the research process, such as creating a solid research question and developing a literature review. He goes over the elements of a study, explains how to collect and analyze data, and shows how to present your data in written and numeric form.

Link to quantitative research video

Some Types of Methods

There are several methods you can use to get primary data. To reiterate, the choice of the methods should depend on your research question/hypothesis. 

Whatever methods you will use, you will need to consider: 

why did you choose one technique over another? What were the advantages and disadvantages of the technique you chose? 

what was the size of your sample? Who made up your sample? How did you select your sample population? Why did you choose that particular sampling strategy?) 

ethical considerations (see also tab...)  

safety considerations  

validity  

feasibility  

recording  

procedure of the research (see box procedural method...).  

Check Stella Cottrell's book  Dissertations and Project Reports: A Step by Step Guide  for some succinct yet comprehensive information on most methods (the following account draws mostly on her work). Check a research methods book in your discipline for more specific guidance.  

Experiments 

Experiments are useful to investigate cause and effect, when the variables can be tightly controlled. They can test a theory or hypothesis in controlled conditions. Experiments do not prove or disprove an hypothesis, instead they support or not support an hypothesis. When using the empirical and inductive method it is not possible to achieve conclusive results. The results may only be valid until falsified by other experiments and observations. 

For more information on Scientific Method, click here . 

Observations 

Observational methods are useful for in-depth analyses of behaviours in people, animals, organisations, events or phenomena. They can test a theory or products in real life or simulated settings. They generally a qualitative research method.  

Questionnaires and surveys 

Questionnaires and surveys are useful to gain opinions, attitudes, preferences, understandings on certain matters. They can provide quantitative data that can be collated systematically; qualitative data, if they include opportunities for open-ended responses; or both qualitative and quantitative elements. 

Interviews  

Interviews are useful to gain rich, qualitative information about individuals' experiences, attitudes or perspectives. With interviews you can follow up immediately on responses for clarification or further details. There are three main types of interviews: structured (following a strict pattern of questions, which expect short answers), semi-structured (following a list of questions, with the opportunity to follow up the answers with improvised questions), and unstructured (following a short list of broad questions, where the respondent can lead more the conversation) (Specht, 2019, p142). 

This short video on qualitative interviews discusses best practices and covers qualitative interview design, preparation and data collection methods. 

Focus groups   

In this case, a group of people (normally, 4-12) is gathered for an interview where the interviewer asks questions to such group of participants. Group interactions and discussions can be highly productive, but the researcher has to beware of the group effect, whereby certain participants and views dominate the interview (Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill 2015, p419). The researcher can try to minimise this by encouraging involvement of all participants and promoting a multiplicity of views. 

This video focuses on strategies for conducting research using focus groups.  

Check out the guidance on online focus groups by Aliaksandr Herasimenka, which is attached at the bottom of this text box. 

Case study 

Case studies are often a convenient way to narrow the focus of your research by studying how a theory or literature fares with regard to a specific person, group, organisation, event or other type of entity or phenomenon you identify. Case studies can be researched using other methods, including those described in this section. Case studies give in-depth insights on the particular reality that has been examined, but may not be representative of what happens in general, they may not be generalisable, and may not be relevant to other contexts. These limitations have to be acknowledged by the researcher.     

Content analysis 

Content analysis consists in the study of words or images within a text. In its broad definition, texts include books, articles, essays, historical documents, speeches, conversations, advertising, interviews, social media posts, films, theatre, paintings or other visuals. Content analysis can be quantitative (e.g. word frequency) or qualitative (e.g. analysing intention and implications of the communication). It can detect propaganda, identify intentions of writers, and can see differences in types of communication (Specht, 2019, p146). Check this page on collecting, cleaning and visualising Twitter data.

Extra links and resources:  

Research Methods  

A clear and comprehensive overview of research methods by Emerald Publishing. It includes: crowdsourcing as a research tool; mixed methods research; case study; discourse analysis; ground theory; repertory grid; ethnographic method and participant observation; interviews; focus group; action research; analysis of qualitative data; survey design; questionnaires; statistics; experiments; empirical research; literature review; secondary data and archival materials; data collection. 

Doing your dissertation during the COVID-19 pandemic  

Resources providing guidance on doing dissertation research during the pandemic: Online research methods; Secondary data sources; Webinars, conferences and podcasts; 

• Virtual Focus Groups Guidance on managing virtual focus groups

5 Minute Methods Videos

The following are a series of useful videos that introduce research methods in five minutes. These resources have been produced by lecturers and students with the University of Westminster's School of Media and Communication. 

Case Study Research

Research Ethics

Quantitative Content Analysis 

Sequential Analysis 

Qualitative Content Analysis 

Thematic Analysis 

Social Media Research 

Mixed Method Research 

Procedural Method

In this part, provide an accurate, detailed account of the methods and procedures that were used in the study or the experiment (if applicable!). 

Include specifics about participants, sample, materials, design and methods. 

If the research involves human subjects, then include a detailed description of who and how many participated along with how the participants were selected.  

Describe all materials used for the study, including equipment, written materials and testing instruments. 

Identify the study's design and any variables or controls employed. 

Write out the steps in the order that they were completed. 

Indicate what participants were asked to do, how measurements were taken and any calculations made to raw data collected. 

Specify statistical techniques applied to the data to reach your conclusions. 

Provide evidence that you incorporated rigor into your research. This is the quality of being thorough and accurate and considers the logic behind your research design. 

Highlight any drawbacks that may have limited your ability to conduct your research thoroughly. 

You have to provide details to allow others to replicate the experiment and/or verify the data, to test the validity of the research. 

Bibliography

Cottrell, S. (2014). Dissertations and project reports: a step by step guide. Hampshire, England: Palgrave Macmillan.

Lombard, E. (2010). Primary and secondary sources.  The Journal of Academic Librarianship , 36(3), 250-253

Saunders, M.N.K., Lewis, P. and Thornhill, A. (2015).  Research Methods for Business Students.  New York: Pearson Education. 

Specht, D. (2019).  The Media And Communications Study Skills Student Guide . London: University of Westminster Press.  

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Advantages of Secondary Research – A Definitive Guide

Published by Jamie Walker at October 19th, 2021 , Revised On August 29, 2023

An intuitive approach is to thoroughly evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of primary and secondary research before selecting the most suitable method for your research. This article presents the key advantages of secondary research so you can select the most appropriate research approach for your academic study.

Also read about the disadvantages of secondary research

Also read about the advantages of primary research

Also, read about the disadvantages of primary research

Under secondary data collection, a researcher fetches the data from the previous studies and uses it for his own research work. Researchers usually use secondary data to address new research objectives or to explore a different aspect of the original research topic of a previous study.

Points to Consider Before Undertaking Secondary Research

Before choosing secondary research, a researcher needs to assess a number of factors. Since the researcher has not collected the data they are going to work on, it is important that they acquaint themselves with it. The researcher should consider;

• What was the method used to collect the data?
• The population of the study
• The aim of the study
• Determine the response categories for each question that was displayed to respondents
• Assessing whether or not to apply weights when analysing the data

Types of Secondary Data

Secondary research, like primary research, can be qualitative, quantitative, or a combination of both . Interviews or focus groups are examples of secondary qualitative data that can be used to glean a deeper understanding of a research problem or topic.

On the other hand, quantitative data is the statistical or numerical information that was obtained through surveys or questionnaires in previous studies.

Advantages of Secondary Research

• The key advantage of secondary research is that data is readily available in most cases, especially from internet sources.
• Secondary research sources such as online libraries, academic databases, journals, e-books, online articles, and government repositories can be accessed to collect data on any given topic . It saves time for the researcher and enables them to collect a relatively large dataset.
• Many researchers appreciate the fact that secondary research is inexpensive as no direct data is being gathered from a real population.
• Secondary research is beneficial in many ways, one of which is that it enables the researchers to anticipate the gaps in research on a specific topic . In other words, it can serve to generate preliminary ideas before a more in-depth study and the collection of primary data commences.
• The implementation of secondary research at the beginning of an investigation will not only uncover gaps in existing data but can also shed light on whether the proposed research has already been completed and whether the information it seeks is available. As a result, this may alleviate the necessity for time-consuming and costly primary research.
• Another distinct feature of secondary research is that the data is often publicly accessible and therefore does not require permission or consent from the study participants to be used. Moreover, handling secondary data appropriately can reduce the concerns about potential ethical violations during the research process.

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When to Use Secondary Research

• When the goal of the proposed project is to discover knowledge gaps.
• When the research project is based on previous work and is meant to explore new patterns and correlations in current data sets rather than producing fresh results.
• When a researcher has a preconceived concept of what they want to accomplish and is aware that genuine data (for example, business or government reports) is already available.
• There has been a recent data collection of information that is relevant to the study’s objectives, and collecting fresh data would not be cost-effective or feasible.

Sources for Secondary Research Data Collection

By the time you understand that secondary research entails a process of assimilation and integration of data from a diverse range of sources, you will begin to see how this new data repository can yield a number of new findings. The most common sources of secondary data collection include;

• Online Sources: An online data collection is a common approach for secondary research since it offers researchers access to a large number of both free and commercial sources that may be readily obtained. Indeed, it might be argued that internet sources bring everything together with other relevant secondary research data sources at one click.
• Library sources: Libraries, both public and private, are extremely significant sources of knowledge. Many of them, in particular, have copies of dissertations that have been contributed by academics and students. Libraries are also a great place to go for commercial research and business reports. Educational institutions, including libraries, typically contain copies of a variety of primary research that they are ready to offer in order to further knowledge and understanding in a certain field.
• Government Reports: Government websites have the potential to reveal valuable research data, as they are audited and credible, and can therefore be used to draw findings in a wide range of study settings. However, caution should be exercised when attempting to access sensitive material.
• Peer review journals
• Textbooks and newspaper

The use of existing data to address your research questions/objectives or solve research problems is called secondary research. There are many circumstances in which secondary research can be beneficial. In this article, we have highlighted some of the most important aspects and forms of secondary research and explain why it is preferable to acquiring your own data.

Regardless of your research topic or problem, there is always a huge pool of information and potential data sets that can be collected and used for initial response. So if you are looking for data that is easy to obtain for your research, secondary research could be the right option for you.

Need Help with Secondary Data Collection?

If you are a student, a researcher, or a business looking to collect secondary research for a report, a dissertation, an essay, or another type of project, feel free to get in touch with us. You can also read about our secondary data collection service here . Our experts include highly qualified academicians, doctors, and researchers who are sure to collect authentic, reliable, up to date and relevant sources for your research study.

Frequently Asked Questions

How to perform secondary research.

To perform secondary research:

• Define research objectives.
• Collect existing data and sources.
• Analyze scholarly articles, books, reports.
• Extract relevant information.
• Compare and synthesize findings.
• Properly cite sources used.

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A hypothesis is a research question that has to be proved correct or incorrect through hypothesis testing – a scientific approach to test a hypothesis.

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Secondary research: definition, methods, & examples.

19 min read This ultimate guide to secondary research helps you understand changes in market trends, customers buying patterns and your competition using existing data sources.

In situations where you’re not involved in the data gathering process ( primary research ), you have to rely on existing information and data to arrive at specific research conclusions or outcomes. This approach is known as secondary research.

In this article, we’re going to explain what secondary research is, how it works, and share some examples of it in practice.

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What is secondary research?

Secondary research, also known as desk research, is a research method that involves compiling existing data sourced from a variety of channels . This includes internal sources (e.g.in-house research) or, more commonly, external sources (such as government statistics, organizational bodies, and the internet).

Secondary research comes in several formats, such as published datasets, reports, and survey responses , and can also be sourced from websites, libraries, and museums.

The information is usually free — or available at a limited access cost — and gathered using surveys , telephone interviews, observation, face-to-face interviews, and more.

When using secondary research, researchers collect, verify, analyze and incorporate it to help them confirm research goals for the research period.

As well as the above, it can be used to review previous research into an area of interest. Researchers can look for patterns across data spanning several years and identify trends — or use it to verify early hypothesis statements and establish whether it’s worth continuing research into a prospective area.

How to conduct secondary research

There are five key steps to conducting secondary research effectively and efficiently:

1.    Identify and define the research topic

First, understand what you will be researching and define the topic by thinking about the research questions you want to be answered.

Ask yourself: What is the point of conducting this research? Then, ask: What do we want to achieve?

This may indicate an exploratory reason (why something happened) or confirm a hypothesis. The answers may indicate ideas that need primary or secondary research (or a combination) to investigate them.

2.    Find research and existing data sources

If secondary research is needed, think about where you might find the information. This helps you narrow down your secondary sources to those that help you answer your questions. What keywords do you need to use?

Which organizations are closely working on this topic already? Are there any competitors that you need to be aware of?

Create a list of the data sources, information, and people that could help you with your work.

3.    Begin searching and collecting the existing data

Now that you have the list of data sources, start accessing the data and collect the information into an organized system. This may mean you start setting up research journal accounts or making telephone calls to book meetings with third-party research teams to verify the details around data results.

As you search and access information, remember to check the data’s date, the credibility of the source, the relevance of the material to your research topic, and the methodology used by the third-party researchers. Start small and as you gain results, investigate further in the areas that help your research’s aims.

4.    Combine the data and compare the results

When you have your data in one place, you need to understand, filter, order, and combine it intelligently. Data may come in different formats where some data could be unusable, while other information may need to be deleted.

After this, you can start to look at different data sets to see what they tell you. You may find that you need to compare the same datasets over different periods for changes over time or compare different datasets to notice overlaps or trends. Ask yourself: What does this data mean to my research? Does it help or hinder my research?

5.    Analyze your data and explore further

In this last stage of the process, look at the information you have and ask yourself if this answers your original questions for your research. Are there any gaps? Do you understand the information you’ve found? If you feel there is more to cover, repeat the steps and delve deeper into the topic so that you can get all the information you need.

If secondary research can’t provide these answers, consider supplementing your results with data gained from primary research. As you explore further, add to your knowledge and update your findings. This will help you present clear, credible information.

Primary vs secondary research

Unlike secondary research, primary research involves creating data first-hand by directly working with interviewees, target users, or a target market. Primary research focuses on the method for carrying out research, asking questions, and collecting data using approaches such as:

• Interviews (panel, face-to-face or over the phone)
• Questionnaires or surveys
• Focus groups

Using these methods, researchers can get in-depth, targeted responses to questions, making results more accurate and specific to their research goals. However, it does take time to do and administer.

Unlike primary research, secondary research uses existing data, which also includes published results from primary research. Researchers summarize the existing research and use the results to support their research goals.

Both primary and secondary research have their places. Primary research can support the findings found through secondary research (and fill knowledge gaps), while secondary research can be a starting point for further primary research. Because of this, these research methods are often combined for optimal research results that are accurate at both the micro and macro level.

Sources of Secondary Research

There are two types of secondary research sources: internal and external. Internal data refers to in-house data that can be gathered from the researcher’s organization. External data refers to data published outside of and not owned by the researcher’s organization.

Internal data

Internal data is a good first port of call for insights and knowledge, as you may already have relevant information stored in your systems. Because you own this information — and it won’t be available to other researchers — it can give you a competitive edge . Examples of internal data include:

• Database information on sales history and business goal conversions
• Information from website applications and mobile site data
• Customer-generated data on product and service efficiency and use
• Previous research results or supplemental research areas
• Previous campaign results

External data

External data is useful when you: 1) need information on a new topic, 2) want to fill in gaps in your knowledge, or 3) want data that breaks down a population or market for trend and pattern analysis. Examples of external data include:

• Government, non-government agencies, and trade body statistics
• Company reports and research
• Competitor research
• Public library collections
• Textbooks and research journals
• Media stories in newspapers
• Online journals and research sites

Three examples of secondary research methods in action

How and why might you conduct secondary research? Let’s look at a few examples:

1.    Collecting factual information from the internet on a specific topic or market

There are plenty of sites that hold data for people to view and use in their research. For example, Google Scholar, ResearchGate, or Wiley Online Library all provide previous research on a particular topic. Researchers can create free accounts and use the search facilities to look into a topic by keyword, before following the instructions to download or export results for further analysis.

This can be useful for exploring a new market that your organization wants to consider entering. For instance, by viewing the U.S Census Bureau demographic data for that area, you can see what the demographics of your target audience are , and create compelling marketing campaigns accordingly.

2.    Finding out the views of your target audience on a particular topic

If you’re interested in seeing the historical views on a particular topic, for example, attitudes to women’s rights in the US, you can turn to secondary sources.

Textbooks, news articles, reviews, and journal entries can all provide qualitative reports and interviews covering how people discussed women’s rights. There may be multimedia elements like video or documented posters of propaganda showing biased language usage.

By gathering this information, synthesizing it, and evaluating the language, who created it and when it was shared, you can create a timeline of how a topic was discussed over time.

3.    When you want to know the latest thinking on a topic

Educational institutions, such as schools and colleges, create a lot of research-based reports on younger audiences or their academic specialisms. Dissertations from students also can be submitted to research journals, making these places useful places to see the latest insights from a new generation of academics.

Information can be requested — and sometimes academic institutions may want to collaborate and conduct research on your behalf. This can provide key primary data in areas that you want to research, as well as secondary data sources for your research.

Advantages of secondary research

There are several benefits of using secondary research, which we’ve outlined below:

• Easily and readily available data – There is an abundance of readily accessible data sources that have been pre-collected for use, in person at local libraries and online using the internet. This data is usually sorted by filters or can be exported into spreadsheet format, meaning that little technical expertise is needed to access and use the data.
• Faster research speeds – Since the data is already published and in the public arena, you don’t need to collect this information through primary research. This can make the research easier to do and faster, as you can get started with the data quickly.
• Low financial and time costs – Most secondary data sources can be accessed for free or at a small cost to the researcher, so the overall research costs are kept low. In addition, by saving on preliminary research, the time costs for the researcher are kept down as well.
• Secondary data can drive additional research actions – The insights gained can support future research activities (like conducting a follow-up survey or specifying future detailed research topics) or help add value to these activities.
• Secondary data can be useful pre-research insights – Secondary source data can provide pre-research insights and information on effects that can help resolve whether research should be conducted. It can also help highlight knowledge gaps, so subsequent research can consider this.
• Ability to scale up results – Secondary sources can include large datasets (like Census data results across several states) so research results can be scaled up quickly using large secondary data sources.

Disadvantages of secondary research

The disadvantages of secondary research are worth considering in advance of conducting research :

• Secondary research data can be out of date – Secondary sources can be updated regularly, but if you’re exploring the data between two updates, the data can be out of date. Researchers will need to consider whether the data available provides the right research coverage dates, so that insights are accurate and timely, or if the data needs to be updated. Also, fast-moving markets may find secondary data expires very quickly.
• Secondary research needs to be verified and interpreted – Where there’s a lot of data from one source, a researcher needs to review and analyze it. The data may need to be verified against other data sets or your hypotheses for accuracy and to ensure you’re using the right data for your research.
• The researcher has had no control over the secondary research – As the researcher has not been involved in the secondary research, invalid data can affect the results. It’s therefore vital that the methodology and controls are closely reviewed so that the data is collected in a systematic and error-free way.
• Secondary research data is not exclusive – As data sets are commonly available, there is no exclusivity and many researchers can use the same data. This can be problematic where researchers want to have exclusive rights over the research results and risk duplication of research in the future.

When do we conduct secondary research?

Now that you know the basics of secondary research, when do researchers normally conduct secondary research?

It’s often used at the beginning of research, when the researcher is trying to understand the current landscape . In addition, if the research area is new to the researcher, it can form crucial background context to help them understand what information exists already. This can plug knowledge gaps, supplement the researcher’s own learning or add to the research.

Secondary research can also be used in conjunction with primary research. Secondary research can become the formative research that helps pinpoint where further primary research is needed to find out specific information. It can also support or verify the findings from primary research.

You can use secondary research where high levels of control aren’t needed by the researcher, but a lot of knowledge on a topic is required from different angles.

Secondary research should not be used in place of primary research as both are very different and are used for various circumstances.

Questions to ask before conducting secondary research

Before you start your secondary research, ask yourself these questions:

• Is there similar internal data that we have created for a similar area in the past?

If your organization has past research, it’s best to review this work before starting a new project. The older work may provide you with the answers, and give you a starting dataset and context of how your organization approached the research before. However, be mindful that the work is probably out of date and view it with that note in mind. Read through and look for where this helps your research goals or where more work is needed.

• What am I trying to achieve with this research?

When you have clear goals, and understand what you need to achieve, you can look for the perfect type of secondary or primary research to support the aims. Different secondary research data will provide you with different information – for example, looking at news stories to tell you a breakdown of your market’s buying patterns won’t be as useful as internal or external data e-commerce and sales data sources.

• How credible will my research be?

If you are looking for credibility, you want to consider how accurate the research results will need to be, and if you can sacrifice credibility for speed by using secondary sources to get you started. Bear in mind which sources you choose — low-credibility data sites, like political party websites that are highly biased to favor their own party, would skew your results.

• What is the date of the secondary research?

When you’re looking to conduct research, you want the results to be as useful as possible , so using data that is 10 years old won’t be as accurate as using data that was created a year ago. Since a lot can change in a few years, note the date of your research and look for earlier data sets that can tell you a more recent picture of results. One caveat to this is using data collected over a long-term period for comparisons with earlier periods, which can tell you about the rate and direction of change.

• Can the data sources be verified? Does the information you have check out?

If you can’t verify the data by looking at the research methodology, speaking to the original team or cross-checking the facts with other research, it could be hard to be sure that the data is accurate. Think about whether you can use another source, or if it’s worth doing some supplementary primary research to replicate and verify results to help with this issue.

We created a front-to-back guide on conducting market research, The ultimate guide to conducting market research , so you can understand the research journey with confidence.

In it, you’ll learn more about:

• What effective market research looks like
• The use cases for market research
• The most important steps to conducting market research
• And how to take action on your research findings

Download the free guide for a clearer view on secondary research and other key research types for your business.

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Secondary Data Analysis: Ethical Issues and Challenges

Research does not always involve collection of data from the participants. There is huge amount of data that is being collected through the routine management information system and other surveys or research activities. The existing data can be analyzed to generate new hypothesis or answer critical research questions. This saves lots of time, money and other resources. Also data from large sample surveys may be of higher quality and representative of the population. It avoids repetition of research & wastage of resources by detailed exploration of existing research data and also ensures that sensitive topics or hard to reach populations are not over researched ( 1 ). However, there are certain ethical issues pertaining to secondary data analysis which should be taken care of before handling such data.

Secondary data analysis

Secondary analysis refers to the use of existing research data to find answer to a question that was different from the original work ( 2 ). Secondary data can be large scale surveys or data collected as part of personal research. Although there is general agreement about sharing the results of large scale surveys, but little agreement exists about the second. While the fundamental ethical issues related to secondary use of research data remain the same, they have become more pressing with the advent of new technologies. Data sharing, compiling and storage have become much faster and easier. At the same time, there are fresh concerns about data confidentiality and security.

Issues in Secondary data analysis

Concerns about secondary use of data mostly revolve around potential harm to individual subjects and issue of return for consent. Secondary data vary in terms of the amount of identifying information in it. If the data has no identifying information or is completely devoid of such information or is appropriately coded so that the researcher does not have access to the codes, then it does not require a full review by the ethical board. The board just needs to confirm that the data is actually anonymous. However, if the data contains identifying information on participants or information that could be linked to identify participants, a complete review of the proposal will then be made by the board. The researcher will then have to explain why is it unavoidable to have identifying information to answer the research question and must also indicate how participants’ privacy and the confidentiality of the data will be protected. If the above said concerns are satisfactorily addressed, the researcher can then request for a waiver of consent.

If the data is freely available on the Internet, books or other public forum, permission for further use and analysis is implied. However, the ownership of the original data must be acknowledged. If the research is part of another research project and the data is not freely available, except to the original research team, explicit, written permission for the use of the data must be obtained from the research team and included in the application for ethical clearance.

However, there are certain other issues pertaining to the data that is procured for secondary analysis. The data obtained should be adequate, relevant but not excessive. In secondary data analysis, the original data was not collected to answer the present research question. Thus the data should be evaluated for certain criteria such as the methodology of data collection, accuracy, period of data collection, purpose for which it was collected and the content of the data. It shall be kept for no longer than is necessary for that purpose. It must be kept safe from unauthorized access, accidental loss or destruction. Data in the form of hardcopies should be kept in safe locked cabinets whereas softcopies should be kept as encrypted files in computers. It is the responsibility of the researcher conducting the secondary analysis to ensure that further analysis of the data conducted is appropriate. In some cases there is provision for analysis of secondary data in the original consent form with the condition that the secondary study is approved by the ethics review committee. According to the British Sociological Association’s Statement of Ethical Practice (2004) the researchers must inform participants regarding the use of data and obtain consent for the future use of the material as well. However it also says that consent is not a once-and-for-all event, but is subject to renegotiation over time ( 3 ). It appears that there are no guidelines about the specific conditions that require further consent.

Issues in Secondary analysis of Qualitative data

In qualitative research, the culture of data archiving is absent ( 4 ). Also, there is a concern that data archiving exposes subject’s personal views. However, the best practice is to plan anonymisation at the time of initial transcription. Use of pseudonyms or replacements can protect subject’s identity. A log of all replacements, aggregations or removals should be made and stored separately from the anonymised data files. But because of the circumstances, under which qualitative data is produced, their reinterpretation at some later date can be challenging and raises further ethical concerns.

There is a need for formulating specific guidelines regarding re-use of data, data protection and anonymisation and issues of consent in secondary data analysis.

Acknowledgements

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.

• Fielding NG, Fielding JL (2003). Resistance and adaptation to criminal identity: Using secondary analysis to evaluate classic studies of crime and deviance . Sociology , 34 ( 4 ): 671–689. [ Google Scholar ]
• Szabo V, Strang VR (1997). Secondary analysis of qualitative data . Advances in Nursing Science , 20 ( 2 ): 66–74. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Statement of Ethical Practice for the British Sociological Association (2004). The British Sociological Association, Durham . Available at: http://www.york.ac.uk/media/abouttheuniversity/governanceandmanagement/governance/ethicscommittee/hssec/documents/BSA%20statement%20of%20ethical%20practice.pdf (Last accessed 24November2013)
• Archiving Qualitative Data: Prospects and Challenges of Data Preservation and Sharing among Australian Qualitative Researchers. Institute for Social Science Research, The University of Queensland, 2009 . Available at: http://www.assda.edu.au/forms/AQuAQualitativeArchiving_DiscussionPaper_FinalNov09.pdf (Last accessed 05September2013)

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What is Secondary Research? | Methods, Types, and Examples

Dissertation Presentation Examples| Effective Writing Techniques for Success

Secondary research, often known as a desk study, uses third parties data rather than its own. In other words, you are not the firsthand source of the information; you have no direct influence on its correctness. Also, you are unsure of the data's representativeness.

Secondary Research Methodology Dissertation Example

Primary Research Methods: A Beginner’s Guide

Even you use the original source for the latter. For example, you might survey or interview consumers for consumer research. We refer to the information gathered as primary data. 

In this article, we will explore various advantages and disadvantages of secondary research and its sources to collect information to  inspire and guide aspiring researchers in formulating their own research queries.

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Pros and cons of secondary research: a comparative analysis.

There are comparative analyzes give you a quick review of the advantages and disadvantages of secondary research. 

         Pros of Secondary Research                                                  Cons of Secondary Research 

Is Secondary Research Really Advantageous? 

Secondary research offers numerous advantages that make it a valuable tool for researchers and students. Some of the key benefits of secondary research include;

Time and Cost Efficiency

It allows researchers to leverage existing data and information, saving considerable time and resources compared to primary research . It eliminates the need for data collection from scratch, reducing costs associated with surveys, interviews, or experiments.

Wide Range of Available Data

It draws upon a vast array of sources, including academic papers , reports, books, and online databases. This wealth of existing data provides researchers with a broad range of information and perspectives to analyze and interpret.

Larger Sample Size

Secondary research often involves large sample sizes, as it draws from existing datasets that may have been collected from numerous participants or sources. This larger sample size enhances the statistical power and generalizability of research findings.

Historical and Longitudinal Analysis

Secondary research enables the examination of historical trends and long-term patterns by utilizing data collected over extended periods. This allows researchers to analyze changes over time and identify temporal patterns or relationships.

Comparative Analysis

It is one of the pros of secondary research to perform a comparative analysis of results from different studies. Comparative analysis helps you to identify the variations and consistent patterns for your particular research. 

Accessibility and Availability

Research sources are often widely accessible, especially in the digital age. Many scholarly articles, reports, and datasets are available online or through libraries, making them easily accessible to researchers around the world.

Ethical Considerations

Be advantageous from an ethical standpoint, as secondary research avoids the potential risks and ethical challenges associated with primary data collection. There is no direct involvement or intrusion into the lives of participants, ensuring privacy and minimizing potential harm.

Supporting Primary Research

Secondary research serves as a foundation for primary research. It helps researchers gain a comprehensive understanding of a topic, identify research gaps, and develop hypotheses before undertaking primary data collection.

Generating New Insights

While secondary research builds upon existing knowledge, it also has the potential to generate new information and perspectives. You just need to reanalyze existing data, leading to novel findings or challenging existing theories.

Informing Decision-Making

The advantages of secondary research extend beyond academia. Businesses, organizations, and policymakers also utilize secondary research findings to inform decision-making processes, shape strategies, and develop evidence-based solutions.

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What are the Drawbacks of Secondary Research?

Where you observe some of the testimonies of advantages there also you can’t ignore the main disadvantages. It is crucial for you to assess its limitations and decide when it is appropriate to utilize primary research methods instead. 

Limited Control over Data Quality

One of the primary disadvantages of secondary research is the lack of control over data quality. Researchers rely on data collected by others, and there is no guarantee of its accuracy, reliability, or validity. The quality of the data sources used in secondary research may vary, potentially affecting the credibility and integrity of the findings.

Less Relevant 

Secondary research sources may introduce inherent biases, such as sampling biases or methodological biases from the original data collection process. Additionally, secondary research may suffer from data incompleteness, gaps, less relevance, or missing variables, which can restrict the analysis and limit the depth of insights.

Expired Information 

 Secondary research is based on existing data that may not directly address the specific research questions or hypotheses of a study. There is a lot of information that has been updated, but you may get some that are outdated or expired. You may require primary research to collect data tailored to your unique needs and research objectives. Secondary research may not provide the level of detail or latest information for your specific topic.

6 Main Sources of Secondary Research That You Must Know 

Sources of secondary research refer to the various outlets and materials that researchers utilize to gather information and data for their studies. These sources serve as valuable repositories of existing knowledge and insights, providing a foundation for further analysis and interpretation. Some common sources of secondary research include:

Published Academic Paper

Peer-reviewed articles and research papers published in academic journals provide authoritative and reliable information on specific topics or research. Some of the old research or published papers help to find the data for specific information that you can add to your dissertation topic. 

Textbooks and Reference Material 

There are many textbooks and encyclopedias that offer comprehensive information and in-depth analysis on a wide range of subjects. Many researchers prepare or write about their research process in their textbooks or publish their research books, and from there, you can also find assistance.

Government Reports & Publications  

Governments often publish reports, statistical data, policy briefs, and white papers that contain valuable information relevant to research in various fields. You can find a variety of valuable data there, including demographic, geographic, economic data, and so on, for your research paper. 

Published Report Analysis

Reports produced by market research firms and industry experts provide insights into market trends, consumer behavior, and competitive landscapes across different industries.

Historical Documents & Archives 

Historical documents, such as letters, diaries, newspapers, and official records, provide a rich source of data for studies focused on historical events and societal changes.

Social media, business publications, and periodicals are excellent resources for data collection. It can either be printed or digital information. They typically provide some evidence to back up the articles they produce. While some might be free, others can require a subscription. 

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Conclusion .

In a nutshell, secondary research has its pros and cons, like two sides of the same coin.

On the bright side, secondary research pros save time and money, open doors to a wealth of available data, and offer broader sample sizes for analysis. It allows historical and comparative studies, supports primary research, and may even uncover new insights.

However, every rose has its thorn. The secondary research cons show that they may not address unique research questions and might rely on outdated or irrelevant data. Ethical concerns and replication challenges can also arise.

Considering these advantages and disadvantages, researchers must tread carefully and choose the right mix of secondary and primary research methods to achieve robust and reliable results.

In the end, understanding the advantages and disadvantages of secondary research helps researchers navigate this complex landscape and make informed decisions for their studies.

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Advantages of Secondary Research

Secondary research refers to the use of existing data to answer research questions or solve research problems. There are many situations where taking this approach can be of benefit, and in this article, we outline some of the key features and types of secondary research and why there are advantages to following this route rather than gathering your own data.

Secondary Research design and types

Secondary research, also known as desk research, is undertaken by collating existing data online or from journals, books and public sources such as government archives and libraries. The design of the research means that the researcher pulls together a range of different data samples and collates them in a systematic way to achieve their research conclusions. The aim is to examine and evaluate established patterns from previous (or a priori) sources and apply these to their own research context.

In most cases the secondary researchers are reliant on data that was previously gathered from primary research and can be used to evaluate and identify gaps in existing knowledge. As a result, secondary research studies are frequently the foundation for subsequent primary research works which examine these identified gaps.

Common Secondary Research Sources

Once you understand that secondary research requires the assimilation and collation of data from potentially varied sources, then you can recognise that this new pool of data can deliver potentially new insights. Common sources of secondary data include online sources, libraries, archives, commercial and organisational reports as well as peer-reviewed journals and textbooks.

Online data

Online data gathering is a highly popular method for secondary research, which gives access to a high volume of both free and paid sources that can be easily gathered by the researcher. Indeed, it can be suggested that online sources bring together, at the click of a button, all the other potential sources of data for secondary research.

Government and Other Archives

Useful research can be found in government archives which are considered verifiable and trustworthy, and as a result can be used to identify insights on a range of research contexts. Care should be taken however not to try and access classified information.

Libraries and Educational Institutions

Public and private libraries are highly valuable sources of information. In particular many hold copies of dissertations, donated by researchers and students. In addition, libraries are an excellent source for commercial research and business reports. Similar to libraries are educational institutions which frequently have copies of a range of primary research that they may be willing to share to further knowledge and understanding in particular area.

Types of Secondary Research

Similar to primary research, secondary research may also be qualitative or quantitative, or a mix of both approaches. Qualitative secondary data is generally interviews or focus groups which can be used to gain more in-depth insights into a research problem or business question. Quantitative data in contrast is focused on gathering statistical data from surveys, questionnaires and business trends.

The biggest advantage of secondary research is that in most cases the data is easy to access, particularly when gathering data from online sources. More traditional secondary research sources such as libraries or government archives are also easy to access. This saves the researcher a great deal of time and allows for a potentially wider dataset to be gathered.

Equally important to many researchers is that secondary research is cost-effective, as there is no direct data collection from a cohort.

A major value in utilising secondary research is that it allows a researcher at an early stage of investigation to identify knowledge gaps in a study area. In other words, it can be used to present initial thoughts before embarking on a longer study and the collection of primary data.

Alongside identification of knowledge gaps, undertaking secondary research at the outset of an investigation can potentially identify that the planned work has already been undertaken and the information the researcher hoped to gain is already available. This can eliminate the need for undertaking time-intensive and costly primary research. Read about the disadvantages of primary research .

An additional potential benefit of utilising secondary research is that in many cases, the data is already in the public domain and thus permission for usage or consent from participants is not required. In addition, provided the secondary data is used appropriately, there is frequently less concerns about potential ethical violations in the conduct of the research.

When should I use secondary research?

There are a number of scenarios when secondary research may be viable:

• When the purpose of the proposed work is to identify gaps in knowledge.
• When the study to be undertaken is building on an existing work and seeks not to find new outcomes but is designed to look at new trends and relationships in existing data sets.
• When the researcher has an existing view on what their outcomes may be and is aware that there is authentic data already available (for example, industry or government reports which are viewed as credible sources).
• There has been a recent data collection of information that is applicable to the study aims and it would not be economical or viable to collect new data. This is a major advantage of using secondary research, particularly in existing fields of study.

Whatever your research question or problem is, in most cases there is a wide body of knowledge and potential datasets that can be collated and used to provide initial responses. So, if you’re looking for easy-to-access data for your essay or dissertation, secondary research may be the right option for you!

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The limitations of the study are those characteristics of design or methodology that impacted or influenced the interpretation of the findings from your research. Study limitations are the constraints placed on the ability to generalize from the results, to further describe applications to practice, and/or related to the utility of findings that are the result of the ways in which you initially chose to design the study or the method used to establish internal and external validity or the result of unanticipated challenges that emerged during the study.

Price, James H. and Judy Murnan. “Research Limitations and the Necessity of Reporting Them.” American Journal of Health Education 35 (2004): 66-67; Theofanidis, Dimitrios and Antigoni Fountouki. "Limitations and Delimitations in the Research Process." Perioperative Nursing 7 (September-December 2018): 155-163. .

Importance of...

Always acknowledge a study's limitations. It is far better that you identify and acknowledge your study’s limitations than to have them pointed out by your professor and have your grade lowered because you appeared to have ignored them or didn't realize they existed.

Keep in mind that acknowledgment of a study's limitations is an opportunity to make suggestions for further research. If you do connect your study's limitations to suggestions for further research, be sure to explain the ways in which these unanswered questions may become more focused because of your study.

Acknowledgment of a study's limitations also provides you with opportunities to demonstrate that you have thought critically about the research problem, understood the relevant literature published about it, and correctly assessed the methods chosen for studying the problem. A key objective of the research process is not only discovering new knowledge but also to confront assumptions and explore what we don't know.

Claiming limitations is a subjective process because you must evaluate the impact of those limitations . Don't just list key weaknesses and the magnitude of a study's limitations. To do so diminishes the validity of your research because it leaves the reader wondering whether, or in what ways, limitation(s) in your study may have impacted the results and conclusions. Limitations require a critical, overall appraisal and interpretation of their impact. You should answer the question: do these problems with errors, methods, validity, etc. eventually matter and, if so, to what extent?

Price, James H. and Judy Murnan. “Research Limitations and the Necessity of Reporting Them.” American Journal of Health Education 35 (2004): 66-67; Structure: How to Structure the Research Limitations Section of Your Dissertation. Dissertations and Theses: An Online Textbook. Laerd.com.

Descriptions of Possible Limitations

All studies have limitations . However, it is important that you restrict your discussion to limitations related to the research problem under investigation. For example, if a meta-analysis of existing literature is not a stated purpose of your research, it should not be discussed as a limitation. Do not apologize for not addressing issues that you did not promise to investigate in the introduction of your paper.

Here are examples of limitations related to methodology and the research process you may need to describe and discuss how they possibly impacted your results. Note that descriptions of limitations should be stated in the past tense because they were discovered after you completed your research.

Possible Methodological Limitations

• Sample size -- the number of the units of analysis you use in your study is dictated by the type of research problem you are investigating. Note that, if your sample size is too small, it will be difficult to find significant relationships from the data, as statistical tests normally require a larger sample size to ensure a representative distribution of the population and to be considered representative of groups of people to whom results will be generalized or transferred. Note that sample size is generally less relevant in qualitative research if explained in the context of the research problem.
• Lack of available and/or reliable data -- a lack of data or of reliable data will likely require you to limit the scope of your analysis, the size of your sample, or it can be a significant obstacle in finding a trend and a meaningful relationship. You need to not only describe these limitations but provide cogent reasons why you believe data is missing or is unreliable. However, don’t just throw up your hands in frustration; use this as an opportunity to describe a need for future research based on designing a different method for gathering data.
• Lack of prior research studies on the topic -- citing prior research studies forms the basis of your literature review and helps lay a foundation for understanding the research problem you are investigating. Depending on the currency or scope of your research topic, there may be little, if any, prior research on your topic. Before assuming this to be true, though, consult with a librarian! In cases when a librarian has confirmed that there is little or no prior research, you may be required to develop an entirely new research typology [for example, using an exploratory rather than an explanatory research design ]. Note again that discovering a limitation can serve as an important opportunity to identify new gaps in the literature and to describe the need for further research.
• Measure used to collect the data -- sometimes it is the case that, after completing your interpretation of the findings, you discover that the way in which you gathered data inhibited your ability to conduct a thorough analysis of the results. For example, you regret not including a specific question in a survey that, in retrospect, could have helped address a particular issue that emerged later in the study. Acknowledge the deficiency by stating a need for future researchers to revise the specific method for gathering data.
• Self-reported data -- whether you are relying on pre-existing data or you are conducting a qualitative research study and gathering the data yourself, self-reported data is limited by the fact that it rarely can be independently verified. In other words, you have to the accuracy of what people say, whether in interviews, focus groups, or on questionnaires, at face value. However, self-reported data can contain several potential sources of bias that you should be alert to and note as limitations. These biases become apparent if they are incongruent with data from other sources. These are: (1) selective memory [remembering or not remembering experiences or events that occurred at some point in the past]; (2) telescoping [recalling events that occurred at one time as if they occurred at another time]; (3) attribution [the act of attributing positive events and outcomes to one's own agency, but attributing negative events and outcomes to external forces]; and, (4) exaggeration [the act of representing outcomes or embellishing events as more significant than is actually suggested from other data].

Possible Limitations of the Researcher

• Access -- if your study depends on having access to people, organizations, data, or documents and, for whatever reason, access is denied or limited in some way, the reasons for this needs to be described. Also, include an explanation why being denied or limited access did not prevent you from following through on your study.
• Longitudinal effects -- unlike your professor, who can literally devote years [even a lifetime] to studying a single topic, the time available to investigate a research problem and to measure change or stability over time is constrained by the due date of your assignment. Be sure to choose a research problem that does not require an excessive amount of time to complete the literature review, apply the methodology, and gather and interpret the results. If you're unsure whether you can complete your research within the confines of the assignment's due date, talk to your professor.
• Cultural and other type of bias -- we all have biases, whether we are conscience of them or not. Bias is when a person, place, event, or thing is viewed or shown in a consistently inaccurate way. Bias is usually negative, though one can have a positive bias as well, especially if that bias reflects your reliance on research that only support your hypothesis. When proof-reading your paper, be especially critical in reviewing how you have stated a problem, selected the data to be studied, what may have been omitted, the manner in which you have ordered events, people, or places, how you have chosen to represent a person, place, or thing, to name a phenomenon, or to use possible words with a positive or negative connotation. NOTE :   If you detect bias in prior research, it must be acknowledged and you should explain what measures were taken to avoid perpetuating that bias. For example, if a previous study only used boys to examine how music education supports effective math skills, describe how your research expands the study to include girls.
• Fluency in a language -- if your research focuses , for example, on measuring the perceived value of after-school tutoring among Mexican-American ESL [English as a Second Language] students and you are not fluent in Spanish, you are limited in being able to read and interpret Spanish language research studies on the topic or to speak with these students in their primary language. This deficiency should be acknowledged.

Aguinis, Hermam and Jeffrey R. Edwards. “Methodological Wishes for the Next Decade and How to Make Wishes Come True.” Journal of Management Studies 51 (January 2014): 143-174; Brutus, Stéphane et al. "Self-Reported Limitations and Future Directions in Scholarly Reports: Analysis and Recommendations." Journal of Management 39 (January 2013): 48-75; Senunyeme, Emmanuel K. Business Research Methods. Powerpoint Presentation. Regent University of Science and Technology; ter Riet, Gerben et al. “All That Glitters Isn't Gold: A Survey on Acknowledgment of Limitations in Biomedical Studies.” PLOS One 8 (November 2013): 1-6.

Structure and Writing Style

Information about the limitations of your study are generally placed either at the beginning of the discussion section of your paper so the reader knows and understands the limitations before reading the rest of your analysis of the findings, or, the limitations are outlined at the conclusion of the discussion section as an acknowledgement of the need for further study. Statements about a study's limitations should not be buried in the body [middle] of the discussion section unless a limitation is specific to something covered in that part of the paper. If this is the case, though, the limitation should be reiterated at the conclusion of the section.

If you determine that your study is seriously flawed due to important limitations , such as, an inability to acquire critical data, consider reframing it as an exploratory study intended to lay the groundwork for a more complete research study in the future. Be sure, though, to specifically explain the ways that these flaws can be successfully overcome in a new study.

But, do not use this as an excuse for not developing a thorough research paper! Review the tab in this guide for developing a research topic . If serious limitations exist, it generally indicates a likelihood that your research problem is too narrowly defined or that the issue or event under study is too recent and, thus, very little research has been written about it. If serious limitations do emerge, consult with your professor about possible ways to overcome them or how to revise your study.

When discussing the limitations of your research, be sure to:

• Describe each limitation in detailed but concise terms;
• Explain why each limitation exists;
• Provide the reasons why each limitation could not be overcome using the method(s) chosen to acquire or gather the data [cite to other studies that had similar problems when possible];
• Assess the impact of each limitation in relation to the overall findings and conclusions of your study; and,
• If appropriate, describe how these limitations could point to the need for further research.

Remember that the method you chose may be the source of a significant limitation that has emerged during your interpretation of the results [for example, you didn't interview a group of people that you later wish you had]. If this is the case, don't panic. Acknowledge it, and explain how applying a different or more robust methodology might address the research problem more effectively in a future study. A underlying goal of scholarly research is not only to show what works, but to demonstrate what doesn't work or what needs further clarification.

Aguinis, Hermam and Jeffrey R. Edwards. “Methodological Wishes for the Next Decade and How to Make Wishes Come True.” Journal of Management Studies 51 (January 2014): 143-174; Brutus, Stéphane et al. "Self-Reported Limitations and Future Directions in Scholarly Reports: Analysis and Recommendations." Journal of Management 39 (January 2013): 48-75; Ioannidis, John P.A. "Limitations are not Properly Acknowledged in the Scientific Literature." Journal of Clinical Epidemiology 60 (2007): 324-329; Pasek, Josh. Writing the Empirical Social Science Research Paper: A Guide for the Perplexed. January 24, 2012. Academia.edu; Structure: How to Structure the Research Limitations Section of Your Dissertation. Dissertations and Theses: An Online Textbook. Laerd.com; What Is an Academic Paper? Institute for Writing Rhetoric. Dartmouth College; Writing the Experimental Report: Methods, Results, and Discussion. The Writing Lab and The OWL. Purdue University.

Writing Tip

Don't Inflate the Importance of Your Findings!

After all the hard work and long hours devoted to writing your research paper, it is easy to get carried away with attributing unwarranted importance to what you’ve done. We all want our academic work to be viewed as excellent and worthy of a good grade, but it is important that you understand and openly acknowledge the limitations of your study. Inflating the importance of your study's findings could be perceived by your readers as an attempt hide its flaws or encourage a biased interpretation of the results. A small measure of humility goes a long way!

Another Writing Tip

Negative Results are Not a Limitation!

Negative evidence refers to findings that unexpectedly challenge rather than support your hypothesis. If you didn't get the results you anticipated, it may mean your hypothesis was incorrect and needs to be reformulated. Or, perhaps you have stumbled onto something unexpected that warrants further study. Moreover, the absence of an effect may be very telling in many situations, particularly in experimental research designs. In any case, your results may very well be of importance to others even though they did not support your hypothesis. Do not fall into the trap of thinking that results contrary to what you expected is a limitation to your study. If you carried out the research well, they are simply your results and only require additional interpretation.

Lewis, George H. and Jonathan F. Lewis. “The Dog in the Night-Time: Negative Evidence in Social Research.” The British Journal of Sociology 31 (December 1980): 544-558.

Yet Another Writing Tip

Sample Size Limitations in Qualitative Research

Sample sizes are typically smaller in qualitative research because, as the study goes on, acquiring more data does not necessarily lead to more information. This is because one occurrence of a piece of data, or a code, is all that is necessary to ensure that it becomes part of the analysis framework. However, it remains true that sample sizes that are too small cannot adequately support claims of having achieved valid conclusions and sample sizes that are too large do not permit the deep, naturalistic, and inductive analysis that defines qualitative inquiry. Determining adequate sample size in qualitative research is ultimately a matter of judgment and experience in evaluating the quality of the information collected against the uses to which it will be applied and the particular research method and purposeful sampling strategy employed. If the sample size is found to be a limitation, it may reflect your judgment about the methodological technique chosen [e.g., single life history study versus focus group interviews] rather than the number of respondents used.

Boddy, Clive Roland. "Sample Size for Qualitative Research." Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal 19 (2016): 426-432; Huberman, A. Michael and Matthew B. Miles. "Data Management and Analysis Methods." In Handbook of Qualitative Research . Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln, eds. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1994), pp. 428-444; Blaikie, Norman. "Confounding Issues Related to Determining Sample Size in Qualitative Research." International Journal of Social Research Methodology 21 (2018): 635-641; Oppong, Steward Harrison. "The Problem of Sampling in qualitative Research." Asian Journal of Management Sciences and Education 2 (2013): 202-210.

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How to do your dissertation secondary research in 4 steps

(Last updated: 12 May 2021)

Since 2006, Oxbridge Essays has been the UK’s leading paid essay-writing and dissertation service

We have helped 10,000s of undergraduate, Masters and PhD students to maximise their grades in essays, dissertations, model-exam answers, applications and other materials. If you would like a free chat about your project with one of our UK staff, then please just reach out on one of the methods below.

If you are reading this guide, it's very likely you may be doing secondary research for your dissertation, rather than primary. If this is indeed you, then here's the good news: secondary research is the easiest type of research! Congratulations!

In a nutshell, secondary research is far more simple. So simple, in fact, that we have been able to explain how to do it completely in just 4 steps (see below). If nothing else, secondary research avoids the all-so-tiring efforts usually involved with primary research. Like recruiting your participants, choosing and preparing your measures, and spending days (or months) collecting your data.

That said, you do still need to know how to do secondary research. Which is what you're here for. So, go make a decent-sized mug of your favourite hot beverage (consider a glass of water , too) then come back and get comfy.

Here's what we'll cover in this guide:

The basics: What's secondary research all about?

Understanding secondary research, advantages of secondary research, disadvantages of secondary research, methods and purposes of secondary research, types of secondary data, sources of secondary data, secondary research process in 4 steps, step 1: develop your research question(s), step 2: identify a secondary data set, step 3: evaluate a secondary data set, step 4: prepare and analyse secondary data.

To answer this question, let’s first recall what we mean by primary research . As you probably already know, primary research is when the researcher collects the data himself or herself. The researcher uses so-called “real-time” data, which means that the data is collected during the course of a specific research project and is under the researcher’s direct control.

In contrast, secondary research involves data that has been collected by somebody else previously. This type of data is called “past data” and is usually accessible via past researchers, government records, and various online and offline resources.

So to recap, secondary research involves re-analysing, interpreting, or reviewing past data. The role of the researcher is always to specify how this past data informs his or her current research.

In contrast to primary research, secondary research is easier, particularly because the researcher is less involved with the actual process of collecting the data. Furthermore, secondary research requires less time and less money (i.e., you don’t need to provide your participants with compensation for participating or pay for any other costs of the research).

TABLE 1 outlines the differences between primary and secondary research:

One of the most obvious advantages is that, compared to primary research, secondary research is inexpensive . Primary research usually requires spending a lot of money. For instance, members of the research team should be paid salaries. There are often travel and transportation costs. You may need to pay for office space and equipment, and compensate your participants for taking part. There may be other overhead costs too.

These costs do not exist when doing secondary research. Although researchers may need to purchase secondary data sets, this is always less costly than if the research were to be conducted from scratch.

As an undergraduate or graduate student, your dissertation project won't need to be an expensive endeavour. Thus, it is useful to know that you can further reduce costs, by using freely available secondary data sets.

But this is far from the only consideration.

Most students value another important advantage of secondary research, which is that secondary research saves you time . Primary research usually requires months spent recruiting participants, providing them with questionnaires, interviews, or other measures, cleaning the data set, and analysing the results. With secondary research, you can skip most of these daunting tasks; instead, you merely need to select, prepare, and analyse an existing data set.

Moreover, you probably won’t need a lot of time to obtain your secondary data set, because secondary data is usually easily accessible . In the past, students needed to go to libraries and spend hours trying to find a suitable data set. New technologies make this process much less time-consuming. In most cases, you can find your secondary data through online search engines or by contacting previous researchers via email.

A third important advantage of secondary research is that you can base your project on a large scope of data . If you wanted to obtain a large data set yourself, you would need to dedicate an immense amount of effort. What's more, if you were doing primary research, you would never be able to use longitudinal data in your graduate or undergraduate project, since it would take you years to complete. This is because longitudinal data involves assessing and re-assessing a group of participants over long periods of time.

When using secondary data, however, you have an opportunity to work with immensely large data sets that somebody else has already collected. Thus, you can also deal with longitudinal data, which may allow you to explore trends and changes of phenomena over time.

With secondary research, you are relying not only on a large scope of data, but also on professionally collected data . This is yet another advantage of secondary research. For instance, data that you will use for your secondary research project has been collected by researchers who are likely to have had years of experience in recruiting representative participant samples, designing studies, and using specific measurement tools.

If you had collected this data yourself, your own data set would probably have more flaws, simply because of your lower level of expertise when compared to these professional researchers.

The first such disadvantage is that your secondary data may be, to a greater or lesser extent, inappropriate for your own research purposes. This is simply because you have not collected the data yourself.

When you collect your data personally, you do so with a specific research question in mind. This makes it easy to obtain the relevant information. However, secondary data was always collected for the purposes of fulfilling other researchers’ goals and objectives.

Thus, although secondary data may provide you with a large scope of professionally collected data, this data is unlikely to be fully appropriate to your own research question. There are several reasons for this. For instance, you may be interested in the data of a particular population, in a specific geographic region, and collected during a specific time frame. However, your secondary data may have focused on a slightly different population, may have been collected in a different geographical region, or may have been collected a long time ago.

Apart from being potentially inappropriate for your own research purposes, secondary data could have a different format than you require. For instance, you might have preferred participants’ age to be in the form of a continuous variable (i.e., you want your participants to have indicated their specific age). But the secondary data set may contain a categorical age variable; for example, participants might have indicated an age group they belong to (e.g., 20-29, 30-39, 40-49, etc.). Or another example: A secondary data set may contain too few ethnic categories (e.g., “White” and “Other”), while you would ideally want a wider range of racial categories (e.g., “White”, “Black or African American”, “American Indian”, and “Asian”). Differences such as these mean that secondary data may not be perfectly appropriate for your research.

The above two disadvantages may lead to yet another one: the existing data set may not answer your own research question(s) in an ideal way. As noted above, secondary data was collected with a different research question in mind, and this may limit its application to your own research purpose.

Unfortunately, the list of disadvantages does not end here. An additional weakness of secondary data is that you have a lack of control over the quality of data. All researchers need to establish that their data is reliable and valid. But if the original researchers did not establish the reliability and validity of their data, this may limit its reliability and validity for your research as well. To establish reliability and validity, you are usually advised to critically evaluate how the data was gathered, analysed, and presented.

But here lies the final disadvantage of doing secondary research: original researchers may fail to provide sufficient information on how their research was conducted. You might be faced with a lack of information on recruitment procedures, sample representativeness, data collection methods, employed measurement tools and statistical analyses, and the like. This may require you to take extra steps to obtain such information, if that is possible at all.

TABLE 2 provides a full summary of advantages and disadvantages of secondary research:

At this point, we should ask: “What are the methods of secondary research?” and “When do we use each of these methods?” Here, we can differentiate between three methods of secondary research: using a secondary data set in isolation , combining two secondary data sets, and combining secondary and primary data sets. Let’s outline each of these separately, and also explain when to use each of these methods.

Initially, you can use a secondary data set in isolation – that is, without combining it with other data sets. You dig and find a data set that is useful for your research purposes and then base your entire research on that set of data. You do this when you want to re-assess a data set with a different research question in mind.

Let’s illustrate this with a simple example. Suppose that, in your research, you want to investigate whether pregnant women of different nationalities experience different levels of anxiety during different pregnancy stages. Based on the literature, you have formed an idea that nationality may matter in this relationship between pregnancy and anxiety.

If you wanted to test this relationship by collecting the data yourself, you would need to recruit many pregnant women of different nationalities and assess their anxiety levels throughout their pregnancy. It would take you at least a year to complete this research project.

Instead of undertaking this long endeavour, you thus decide to find a secondary data set – one that investigated (for instance) a range of difficulties experienced by pregnant women in a nationwide sample. The original research question that guided this research could have been: “to what extent do pregnant women experience a range of mental health difficulties, including stress, anxiety, mood disorders, and paranoid thoughts?” The original researchers might have outlined women’s nationality, but weren’t particularly interested in investigating the link between women’s nationality and anxiety at different pregnancy stages. You are, therefore, re-assessing their data set with your own research question in mind.

Your research may, however, require you to combine two secondary data sets . You will use this kind of methodology when you want to investigate the relationship between certain variables in two data sets or when you want to compare findings from two past studies.

To take an example: One of your secondary data sets may focus on a target population’s tendency to smoke cigarettes, while the other data set focuses on the same population’s tendency to drink alcohol. In your own research, you may thus be looking at whether there is a correlation between smoking and drinking among this population.

Here is a second example: Your two secondary data sets may focus on the same outcome variable, such as the degree to which people go to Greece for a summer vacation. However, one data set could have been collected in Britain and the other in Germany. By comparing these two data sets, you can investigate which nation tends to visit Greece more.

Finally, your research project may involve combining primary and secondary data . You may decide to do this when you want to obtain existing information that would inform your primary research.

Let’s use another simple example and say that your research project focuses on American versus British people’s attitudes towards racial discrimination. Let’s say that you were able to find a recent study that investigated Americans’ attitudes of these kind, which were assessed with a certain set of measures. However, your search finds no recent studies on Britons’ attitudes. Let’s also say that you live in London and that it would be difficult for you to assess Americans’ attitudes on the topic, but clearly much more straightforward to conduct primary research on British attitudes.

In this case, you can simply reuse the data from the American study and adopt exactly the same measures with your British participants. Your secondary data is being combined with your primary data. Alternatively, you may combine these types of data when the role of your secondary data is to outline descriptive information that supports your research. For instance, if your project is focusing on attitudes towards McDonald’s food, you may want to support your primary research with secondary data that outlines how many people eat McDonald’s in your country of choice.

TABLE 3 summarises particular methods and purposes of secondary research:

We have already provided above several examples of using quantitative secondary data. This type of data is used when the original study has investigated a population’s tendency to smoke or drink alcohol, the degree to which people from different nationalities go to Greece for their summer vacation, or the degree to which pregnant women experience anxiety.

In all these examples, outcome variables were assessed by questionnaires, and thus the obtained data was numerical.

Quantitative secondary research is much more common than qualitative secondary research. However, this is not to say that you cannot use qualitative secondary data in your research project. This type of secondary data is used when you want the previously-collected information to inform your current research. More specifically, it is used when you want to test the information obtained through qualitative research by implementing a quantitative methodology.

For instance, a past qualitative study might have focused on the reasons why people choose to live on boats. This study might have interviewed some 30 participants and noted the four most important reasons people live on boats: (1) they can lead a transient lifestyle, (2) they have an increased sense of freedom, (3) they feel that they are “world citizens”, and (4) they can more easily visit their family members who live in different locations. In your own research, you can therefore reuse this qualitative data to form a questionnaire, which you then give to a larger population of people who live on boats. This will help you to generalise the previously-obtained qualitative results to a broader population.

Importantly, you can also re-assess a qualitative data set in your research, rather than using it as a basis for your quantitative research. Let’s say that your research focuses on the kind of language that people who live on boats use when describing their transient lifestyles. The original research did not focus on this research question per se – however, you can reuse the information from interviews to “extract” the types of descriptions of a transient lifestyle that were given by participants.

TABLE 4 highlights the two main types of secondary data and their associated purposes:

Internal sources of data are those that are internal to the organisation in question. For instance, if you are doing a research project for an organisation (or research institution) where you are an intern, and you want to reuse some of their past data, you would be using internal data sources.

The benefit of using these sources is that they are easily accessible and there is no associated financial cost of obtaining them.

External sources of data, on the other hand, are those that are external to an organisation or a research institution. This type of data has been collected by “somebody else”, in the literal sense of the term. The benefit of external sources of data is that they provide comprehensive data – however, you may sometimes need more effort (or money) to obtain it.

Let’s now focus on different types of internal and external secondary data sources.

There are several types of internal sources. For instance, if your research focuses on an organisation’s profitability, you might use their sales data . Each organisation keeps a track of its sales records, and thus your data may provide information on sales by geographical area, types of customer, product prices, types of product packaging, time of the year, and the like.

Alternatively, you may use an organisation’s financial data . The purpose of using this data could be to conduct a cost-benefit analysis and understand the economic opportunities or outcomes of hiring more people, buying more vehicles, investing in new products, and so on.

Another type of internal data is transport data . Here, you may focus on outlining the safest and most effective transportation routes or vehicles used by an organisation.

Alternatively, you may rely on marketing data , where your goal would be to assess the benefits and outcomes of different marketing operations and strategies.

Some other ideas would be to use customer data to ascertain the ideal type of customer, or to use safety data to explore the degree to which employees comply with an organisation’s safety regulations.

The list of the types of internal sources of secondary data can be extensive; the most important thing to remember is that this data comes from a particular organisation itself, in which you do your research in an internal manner.

The list of external secondary data sources can be just as extensive. One example is the data obtained through government sources . These can include social surveys, health data, agricultural statistics, energy expenditure statistics, population censuses, import/export data, production statistics, and the like. Government agencies tend to conduct a lot of research, therefore covering almost any kind of topic you can think of.

Another external source of secondary data are national and international institutions , including banks, trade unions, universities, health organisations, etc. As with government, such institutions dedicate a lot of effort to conducting up-to-date research, so you simply need to find an organisation that has collected the data on your own topic of interest.

Alternatively, you may obtain your secondary data from trade, business, and professional associations . These usually have data sets on business-related topics and are likely to be willing to provide you with secondary data if they understand the importance of your research. If your research is built on past academic studies, you may also rely on scientific journals as an external data source.

Once you have specified what kind of secondary data you need, you can contact the authors of the original study.

As a final example of a secondary data source, you can rely on data from commercial research organisations. These usually focus their research on media statistics and consumer information, which may be relevant if, for example, your research is within media studies or you are investigating consumer behaviour.

TABLE 5 summarises the two sources of secondary data and associated examples:

At this point, you should have a clearer understanding of secondary research in general terms.

Now it may be useful to focus on the actual process of doing secondary research. This next section is organised to introduce you to each step of this process, so that you can rely on this guide while planning your study. At the end of this blog post, in Table 6 , you will find a summary of all the steps of doing secondary research.

For an undergraduate thesis, you are often provided with a specific research question by your supervisor. But for most other types of research, and especially if you are doing your graduate thesis, you need to arrive at a research question yourself.

The first step here is to specify the general research area in which your research will fall. For example, you may be interested in the topic of anxiety during pregnancy, or tourism in Greece, or transient lifestyles. Since we have used these examples previously, it may be useful to rely on them again to illustrate our discussion.

Once you have identified your general topic, your next step consists of reading through existing papers to see whether there is a gap in the literature that your research can fill. At this point, you may discover that previous research has not investigated national differences in the experiences of anxiety during pregnancy, or national differences in a tendency to go to Greece for a summer vacation, or that there is no literature generalising the findings on people’s choice to live on boats.

Having found your topic of interest and identified a gap in the literature, you need to specify your research question. In our three examples, research questions would be specified in the following manner: (1) “Do women of different nationalities experience different levels of anxiety during different stages of pregnancy?”, (2) “Are there any differences in an interest in Greek tourism between Germans and Britons?”, and (3) “Why do people choose to live on boats?”.

It is at this point, after reviewing the literature and specifying your research questions, that you may decide to rely on secondary data. You will do this if you discover that there is past data that would be perfectly reusable in your own research, therefore helping you to answer your research question more thoroughly (and easily).

But how do you discover if there is past data that could be useful for your research? You do this through reviewing the literature on your topic of interest. During this process, you will identify other researchers, organisations, agencies, or research centres that have explored your research topic.

Somewhere there, you may discover a useful secondary data set. You then need to contact the original authors and ask for a permission to use their data. (Note, however, that this happens only if you are relying on external sources of secondary data. If you are doing your research internally (i.e., within a particular organisation), you don’t need to search through the literature for a secondary data set – you can just reuse some past data that was collected within the organisation itself.)

In any case, you need to ensure that a secondary data set is a good fit for your own research question. Once you have established that it is, you need to specify the reasons why you have decided to rely on secondary data.

For instance, your choice to rely on secondary data in the above examples might be as follows: (1) A recent study has focused on a range of mental difficulties experienced by women in a multinational sample and this data can be reused; (2) There is existing data on Germans’ and Britons’ interest in Greek tourism and these data sets can be compared; and (3) There is existing qualitative research on the reasons for choosing to live on boats, and this data can be relied upon to conduct a further quantitative investigation.

Because such disadvantages of secondary data can limit the effectiveness of your research, it is crucial that you evaluate a secondary data set. To ease this process, we outline here a reflective approach that will allow you to evaluate secondary data in a stepwise fashion.

Step 3(a): What was the aim of the original study?

During this step, you also need to pay close attention to any differences in research purposes and research questions between the original study and your own investigation. As we have discussed previously, you will often discover that the original study had a different research question in mind, and it is important for you to specify this difference.

Let’s put this step of identifying the aim of the original study in practice, by referring to our three research examples. The aim of the first research example was to investigate mental difficulties (e.g., stress, anxiety, mood disorders, and paranoid thoughts) in a multinational sample of pregnant women.

How does this aim differ from your research aim? Well, you are seeking to reuse this data set to investigate national differences in anxiety experienced by women during different pregnancy stages. When it comes to the second research example, you are basing your research on two secondary data sets – one that aimed to investigate Germans’ interest in Greek tourism and the other that aimed to investigate Britons’ interest in Greek tourism.

While these two studies focused on particular national populations, the aim of your research is to compare Germans’ and Britons’ tendency to visit Greece for summer vacation. Finally, in our third example, the original research was a qualitative investigation into the reasons for living on boats. Your research question is different, because, although you are seeking to do the same investigation, you wish to do so by using a quantitative methodology.

Importantly, in all three examples, you conclude that secondary data may in fact answer your research question. If you conclude otherwise, it may be wise to find a different secondary data set or to opt for primary research.

Step 3(b): Who has collected the data?

Let’s say that, in our example of research on pregnancy, data was collected by the UK government; that in our example of research on Greek tourism, the data was collected by a travel agency; and that in our example of research on the reasons for choosing to live on boats, the data was collected by researchers from a UK university.

Let’s also say that you have checked the background of these organisations and researchers, and that you have concluded that they all have a sufficiently professional background, except for the travel agency. Given that this agency’s research did not lead to a publication (for instance), and given that not much can be found about the authors of the research, you conclude that the professionalism of this data source remains unclear.

Step 3(c): Which measures were employed?

Original authors should have documented all their sample characteristics, measures, procedures, and protocols. This information can be obtained either in their final research report or through contacting the authors directly.

It is important for you to know what type of data was collected, which measures were used, and whether such measures were reliable and valid (if they were quantitative measures). You also need to make a clear outline of the type of data collected – and especially the data relevant for your research.

Let’s say that, in our first example, researchers have (among other assessed variables) used a demographic measure to note women’s nationalities and have used the State Anxiety Inventory to assess women’s anxiety levels during different pregnancy stages, both of which you conclude are valid and reliable tools. In our second example, the authors might have crafted their own measure to assess interest in Greek tourism, but there may be no established validity and reliability for this measure. And in our third example, the authors have employed semi-structured interviews, which cover the most important reasons for wanting to live on boats.

Step 3(d): When was the data collected?

Ideally, you want your secondary data to have been collected within the last five years. For the sake of our examples, let’s say that all three original studies were conducted within this time-range.

Step 3(e): What methodology was used to collect the data?

We have already noted that you need to evaluate the reliability and validity of employed measures. In addition to this, you need to evaluate how the sample was obtained, whether the sample was large enough, if the sample was representative of the population, if there were any missing responses on employed measures, whether confounders were controlled for, and whether the employed statistical analyses were appropriate. Any drawbacks in the original methodology may limit your own research as well.

For the sake of our examples, let’s say that the study on mental difficulties in pregnant women recruited a representative sample of pregnant women (i.e., they had different nationalities, different economic backgrounds, different education levels, etc.) in maternity wards of seven hospitals; that the sample was large enough (N = 945); that the number of missing values was low; that many confounders were controlled for (e.g., education level, age, presence of partnership, etc.); and that statistical analyses were appropriate (e.g., regression analyses were used).

Let’s further say that our second research example had slightly less sufficient methodology. Although the number of participants in the two samples was high enough (N1 = 453; N2 = 488), the number of missing values was low, and statistical analyses were appropriate (descriptive statistics), the authors failed to report how they recruited their participants and whether they controlled for any confounders.

Let’s say that these authors also failed to provide you with more information via email. Finally, let’s assume that our third research example also had sufficient methodology, with a sufficiently large sample size for a qualitative investigation (N = 30), high sample representativeness (participants with different backgrounds, coming from different boat communities), and sufficient analyses (thematic analysis).

Note that, since this was a qualitative investigation, there is no need to evaluate the number of missing values and the use of confounders.

Step 3(f): Making a final evaluation

We would conclude that the secondary data from our first research example has a high quality. Data was recently collected by professionals, the employed measures were both reliable and valid, and the methodology was more than sufficient. We can be confident that our new research question can be sufficiently answered with the existing data. Thus, the data set for our first example is ideal.

The two secondary data sets from our second research example seem, however, less than ideal. Although we can answer our research questions on the basis of these recent data sets, the data was collected by an unprofessional source, the reliability and validity of the employed measure is uncertain, and the employed methodology has a few notable drawbacks.

Finally, the data from our third example seems sufficient both for answering our research question and in terms of the specific evaluations (data was collected recently by a professional source, semi-structured interviews were well made, and the employed methodology was sufficient).

The final question to ask is: “what can be done if our evaluation reveals the lack of appropriateness of secondary data?”. The answer, unfortunately, is “nothing”. In this instance, you can only note the drawbacks of the original data set, present its limitations, and conclude that your own research may not be sufficiently well grounded.

Your first sub-step here (if you are doing quantitative research) is to outline all variables of interest that you will use in your study. In our first example, you could have at least five variables of interest: (1) women’s nationality, (2) anxiety levels at the beginning of pregnancy, (3) anxiety levels at three months of pregnancy, (4) anxiety levels at six months of pregnancy, and (5) anxiety levels at nine months of pregnancy. In our second example, you will have two variables of interest: (1) participants’ nationality, and (2) the degree of interest in going to Greece for a summer vacation. Once your variables of interest are identified, you need to transfer this data into a new SPSS or Excel file. Remember simply to copy this data into the new file – it is vital that you do not alter it!

Once this is done, you should address missing data (identify and label them) and recode variables if necessary (e.g., giving a value of 1 to German participants and a value of 2 to British participants). You may also need to reverse-score some items, so that higher scores on all items indicate a higher degree of what is being assessed.

Most of the time, you will also need to create new variables – that is, to compute final scores. For instance, in our example of research on anxiety during pregnancy, your data will consist of scores on each item of the State Anxiety Inventory, completed at various times during pregnancy. You will need to calculate final anxiety scores for each time the measure was completed.

Your final step consists of analysing the data. You will always need to decide on the most suitable analysis technique for your secondary data set. In our first research example, you would rely on MANOVA (to see if women of different nationalities experience different stress levels at the beginning, at three months, at six months, and at nine months of pregnancy); and in our second example, you would use an independent samples t-test (to see if interest in Greek tourism differs between Germans and Britons).

The process of preparing and analysing a secondary data set is slightly different if your secondary data is qualitative. In our example on the reasons for living on boats, you would first need to outline all reasons for living on boats, as recognised by the original qualitative research. Then you would need to craft a questionnaire that assesses these reasons in a broader population.

Finally, you would need to analyse the data by employing statistical analyses.

Note that this example combines qualitative and quantitative data. But what if you are reusing qualitative data, as in our previous example of re-coding the interviews from our study to discover the language used when describing transient lifestyles? Here, you would simply need to recode the interviews and conduct a thematic analysis.

In summary…

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Secondary Data: sources, advantages and disadvantages.

• In book: SAGE Encyclopedia of Communication Research Methods (pp.4:1577-1579)
• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Editors: Dr. Mike Allen

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