Secondary facts are one type of quantitative data that was already collected by another person for almost any different purpose to yours. For instance, this might mean using:

• data collected getting expensive hotels on its customers through its guest history system.
• data provided with an advertising organization.
• annual school testing reports.
• government health statistics.

Secondary data may be used diversely:

• It is simple to report the information inside the original format. If that’s the problem, then it is likely the area with this particular data can be found in much of your introduction or literature review as support or evidence for your argument.
• That you can do something while using the data. If you use it (evaluate it or re-interpret it) for almost any different purpose for that original your probably place may be within the ‘Analysis of findings’ a part of your dissertation.

Example. Among this usage was the job on suicide transported out by Durkheim. He needed the problem suicide statistics of several countries (recorded by coroners or their equivalent) and examined these to determine whether he could identify variables that signifies many individuals will most likely commit suicide than the others. He found, for instance, that Catholics were less inclined to commit suicide than Protestants. In this manner, he needed data that have been collected for just about any significant different purpose and attempted round the extender inside the own study – but he’d to perform a large amount of comparisons and record correlations themselves to be able to measure the information. (See Haralambos, 1995, for information on Durkheim’s work).

Most research necessitates selection of primary data (data that you simply collect initially hands), it is exactly what students focus on.

Regrettably, many research reports don’t include secondary data in their findings section while it’s perfectly acceptable to accomplish this, offering you’ve examined it. It will always be a good idea to use data collected by another person whether it exists – it might be round the bigger scale than you’ll be able to need to collect and may lead for that findings significantly.

As secondary data remains collected for almost any different purpose to yours, you need to address it carefully. The fundamental products to inquire about are:

• Where will get the information derive from?
• Will it cover the very best location?
• Will it be current (not too outdated)?
• If you are intending to combine along with other data would be the data exactly the same (for instance, units, time, etc.)?
• If you are planning to evaluate along with other data are you currently presently presently evaluating much like like?

Thus you need to create a detailed study on the following:

• Title (for instance, time-frame the data describes along with the geographical coverage).
• Units within the data.
• Source (some secondary facts are already secondary data).
• Column and row headings, if presented in tabular form.
• Definitions and abbreviations, for instance, how much does SIC indicate? For instance, how’s ‘small’ defined within the phrase ‘small hotel’? Is ‘small’ using the level of rooms, cost of sales, amount of employees, profit, turnover, square meters of space, etc. and do different sources make use of the word ‘small’ diversely? Setup same unit of measurement can be utilized, there probably is going to be problems. For instance, in Norwegian, firms with 200-499 staff is looked as ‘medium’, whereas within the united states . states firms with under 500 staff is looked as ‘small’.

There are many causes of data and a lot of people have a inclination to underestimate the amount of sources and the quantity of data within every one of these sources.

Sources are:

• paper-based sources – books, journals, periodicals, abstracts, indexes, directories, research reports, conference papers, market reports, annual reports, internal records of organizations, magazines and newspapers
• electronic sources – CD-ROMs, on-line databases, Internet, videos and broadcasts.