Primary And Secondary Data Flashcards
Primary data
A01
- Gathered first hand from a source directly by the researcher(s)
- Collection involves designing the studying, bathing ethical approval al, piloting the study recruiting and testing participants and finally analysing the data collected and drawing a conclusion
- Examples include questionnaire, observations, content analysis and experiments
- Data collected specifically related to the aims and/or hypotheses of the study
Secondary data
A01
-Already gathered by researchers and used by others for further research/information collected for a purpose other than the current one
-Eg government stats from a census inform researchers about the number of females living lone, or stats of treatment of mental health- data held by hospitals/ institutions
-Meta analysis= researchers pool data on a particular topic using secondary data because the data being studied has not been gathered first hand
-Correlational studies use secondary data
Eg twin studies tend to use secondary data because otherwise they would find themselves subjects of many studies, instead a twin study gathers lots of dat than other researchers can then drawn on eg Brendgen et al (2005) used data
Primary
A03- Validity
Strength-
Validity is considered higher in primary data as data is gathered first hand. Within the design is a specific purpose meaning that considerations are taken into what has been gathered to relate to ‘real life’ and the IV is operationalised to represent what is being measured. This can include interviews from patients with a specific disorder or questionnaires relating to behaviour.
Primary
A03- Cost benefit analysis
Weakness-
The gathering of primary data may be seen as less cost effective than secondary data as the study has to be conducted from the beginning. A researcher would have to follow the only study through; finding participants, organising materials and carrying it out, all of which takes up lots of time and resources which could potentially be expensive.
Primary
Reliability-A03
Strength-
Researcher would be aware of the process in which the data was gathered and familiar with the controls and standardisation (such as in the procedure)which took place in the study. Therefore they can be confident in the study’s reliability and replicate it to verify its accuracy.
Primary
Ethics- A03
Weakness-
Primary data is gathered directly from participants and therefore is more likely to exploit the potential participants in order to gather data in response to the research aim. This means such data contains more ethical issues such as consent and deception, suggesting it is a less ethical form of data.
Secondary data
Cost benefit- A03
Strength-
Secondary data can be thought of as a more cost and time effective form of data as it can be easily obtained with published data publicly available and researchers avoiding the expense of the data collection themselves.
Secondary data
Ethics-A03
Strength-
Compared to primary data, secondary data can be considered the more ethical data collection method as there are no participants involved. The data is not collected from people directly, with it already in the public domain, therefore avoiding ethical issues such as informed consent and deception.
Secondary data
Reliability-A03
Weakness-
The reliability of secondary data is questionable as the controls and standardisation present in the studies are unknown. Therefore, there may be original errors which could impact the accuracy of the analysis. The uncertainty of this means secondary data lacks reliability in comparison to primary data
Secondary data
A03-Validity
Weakness-
The use and interpretation of secondary data can be argued to lack validity as often the data was initially collected for a different purpose or research question. Meaning the results may not be generalisable to the current research question and so reduce both validity and credibility of the analysis.
