Research Guides: Public Health Research Guide: Primary & Secondary Data Definitions

Primary & Secondary Data Definitions

Primary Data: Data that has been generated by the researcher himself/herself, surveys, interviews, experiments, specially designed for understanding and solving the research problem at hand.

Secondary Data: Using existing data generated by large government Institutions, healthcare facilities etc. as part of organizational record keeping. The data is then extracted from more varied datafiles.

Supplementary Data: A few years ago the Obama Administration judged that any research that is done using Federal Public funds should be available for free to the public. Moreover Data Management Plans should be in place to store and preserve the data for almost eternity. These data sets are published as Supplementary Materials in the journal lliterature, and data sets can downloaded and manipulated for research.

NOTE: Even though the research is Primary source, the supplemental files downloaded by others becomes Secondary Source.

Pros and Cons for each.

Comparison Chart

BASIS FOR COMPARISON	PRIMARY DATA	SECONDARY DATA
Meaning	Primary data refers to the first hand data gathered by the researcher himself.	Secondary data means data collected by someone else earlier.
Data	Real time data	Past data
Process	Very involved	Quick and easy
Source	Surveys, observations, experiments, questionnaire, personal interview, etc.	Government publications, websites, books, journal articles, internal records etc.
Cost effectiveness	Expensive	Economical
Collection time	Long	Short
Specific	Always specific to the researcher's needs.	May or may not be specific to the researcher's need.
Available in	Crude form	Refined form
Accuracy and Reliability	More	Relatively less

Quantitative & Qualitative Research Methods

Quantitative Research Definition: Data that can be measured, quantified. Basically Descriptive Statistics.

Read: Introduction to Quantitative Methods

Qualitative Research Definition: Data collected that is not numerical, hence cannot be quantified. It measures other characteristics through interviews, observation and focused groups among a few methods. It can also be termed as "Categorical Statistics".

Read: Qualitative methods in public health

Mixed methods research. When quantitative and qualitative research methods are used.

Qualitative Research Methods:

Method	Overall Purpose	Advantages	Challenges
Surveys	Quickly and/or easily gets lots of information from people in a non threatening way	can complete anonymously inexpensive to administer easy to compare and analyze administer to many people can get lots of data many sample questionnaires already exist	might not get careful feedback wording can bias client's responses impersonal may need sampling expert doesn't get full story
Interviews	Understand someone's impressions or experiences Learn more about answers to questionnaires	get full range and depth of information develops relationship with client can be flexible with client	can take ime can be hard to analyze and compare can be costly interviewer can bias client's responses
Observation	Gather firsthand information about people, events, or programs	view operations of a program as they are actually occurring can adapt to events as they occur	can be difficult to interpret seen behaviors can be complex to categorize observations can influence behaviors of program participants can be expensive
Focus Groups	Explore a topic in depth through group discussion	quickly and reliably get common impressions can be efficient way to get much range and depth of information in short time can convey key information about programs	can be hard to analyze responses need good facilitator for safety and closure difficult to schedule 6-8 people together
Case Studies	Understand an experience or conduct comprehensive examination through cross comparison of cases	depicts client's experience in program input, process and results powerful means to portray program to outsiders	usually time consuming to collect, organize and describe represents depth of information, rather than breadth

Source: https://managementhelp.org/evaluation/program-evaluation-guide.htm#anchor1585345

Public Health Research Guide: Primary & Secondary Data Definitions

Guide Author

Ask a Librarian

Primary & Secondary Data Definitions

Quantitative & Qualitative Research Methods