Primary and Secondary data

Question 1

What is primary data?

Answer 1

Primary data means original data that has been collected by those who witnessed an event first-hand or who collected the data themselves for a specific purpose

Question 2

What may primary data present?

Answer 2

It may present original thinking or new information.

Question 3

Give Examples of primary data.

Answer 3

Examples of primary data include results from a questionnaire or experiment, which can be qualitative or quantitative.

Question 4

Give an example of a study that collected primary data.

Answer 4

For example Gottesman and Shields collected primary data in their twin study of schizophrenia by using personality testing, testing to examine thought disorders and tape recordings of 30 minute samples of verbal behaviour gathered by semi-structured interviews.

Question 5

How many primary data be used?

Answer 5

Data can be sets of statistics that you then input into a computer programme to construct frequency distributions or other descriptive statistics.

Question 6

What is a strength of primary data in terms of reliability.

Answer 6

n general primary data is a reliable source because the researcher can replicate the procedures to check results, as they know the procedures and how the data was collected and analysed.

Question 7

What is a strength of primary data in terms of how old the data is.

Answer 7

Primary data will also be more up-to-date. Data gathered years previously is less likely to provide reliable answers to the questions your data needs to address.

Question 8

What is a strength of primary data in terms of research methods.

Answer 8

Since primary data is taken directly from the population in question, it is one of the best types of data to collect for research methods like the survey.

Question 9

What is a weakness of primary data in terms of subjectivity.

Answer 9

Researchers may be subjective in what kinds of data they look for, in particular data that ‘fits’ the hypothesis they are trying to test.

Question 10

What is a weakness of primary data in terms of efficiency.

Answer 10

The data has to be gathered from scratch, which needs a large population to make it generalisable which can usually make gathering primary data time consuming and costly. Secondary data requires no effort to gather.

Question 11

What is secondary data?

Answer 11

Secondary data are a second hand analysis of pre-existing (primary data).

Question 12

How may secondary data be used?

Answer 12

t may be analysed in a different way or used to answer a different question from that addressed in the original research.

Question 13

When does primary data become secondary data?

Answer 13

After statistical operations have been performed on primary data, the results become known as secondary data.

Question 14

When may secondary data be used before primary data?

Answer 14

In some cases, secondary data is gathered before primary data in order to find out what is already known about a subject before embarking on the new investigation.

Question 15

Where can secondary data be found?

Answer 15

The internet or in books.

Question 16

What does secondary data analysis use?

Answer 16

Secondary data analysis uses data that was collected by someone else, in order to further a study that psychologists are interested in completing

Question 17

Give an example of a study that gathered secondary data.

Answer 17

In the Gottesman and Shields twin study secondary data were collected by accessing patient records from Maudsley and Bethlem Royal Joint Hospital.

Question 18

What is a strength of secondary data in terms of efficiency?

Answer 18

It saves time and expense that would otherwise be spent collecting data.

Question 19

What is a strength of secondary data in terms of the volume of data?

Answer 19

It can provide a larger database (e.g. a university library) than an individual researcher could hope to collect.

Question 20

What is a strength of secondary data in terms of availability.

Answer 20

In some cases, for example historical documents, secondary data is often the only resource and thus the only way to examine large-scale trends of the past.

Question 21

What is a weakness of secondary data in terms of reliability.

Answer 21

The researcher cannot personally check that data so its reliability may be questioned.

Question 22

What is a weakness of secondary data in terms of lack of knowledge.

Answer 22

The researcher may have no knowledge of how the data was collected. Therefore, they do not know anything about its accuracy or its bounds of error.

Question 23

What is a weakness of secondary data in terms of the age of the data.

Answer 23

The data may be out-of-date and therefore not suitable for current research.