What is primary and secondary data?

When it comes to research of any kind whatsoever, there are certain terms that are very important and as such must be known by all the parties involved in the research. Key among these is primary and secondary data both of which have certain similarities and differences.

In case you are looking for more information on what are primary and secondary data, then you are reading the right article. For starters, you can be certain that primary data refers to original material including the first hand accounts of any sort of event or even on a literally work or art.

Mostly, therefore, primary data will usually refer to that kind of data that has not undergone any sort of interpretation by anyone else other than the person who created it. There are different kinds of primary data and these include visual art, sheet music, drama, poetry, stories, speeches, interviews, autobiographies, letters and diaries.

On the other hand, secondary data refers to those sources of information that are used to interpret and analyze primary data by drawing upon such data to make explanations for events that happened in the past or even to be able to explore whatever meaning can be derived from a work of art. To this end, secondary data will normally be produced some time after the primary data has been derived or the event has transpired.

Finally, the authors of secondary data are usually modern commentators or authors instead of being the eyewitnesses who came up with this kind of data. Most secondary data types include textbooks, articles found inside journals and scholarly books.

To come to a suitable conclusion, knowing the difference between primary and secondary data is very important since it helps people to cross refer and to create lists of bibliographies and references whenever they conduct studies.

In order to carry out research on a particular subject a researcher needs to collect data fro carrying out a research. Data is of two forms either primary or secondary.
Primary data is the information that is collected first hand by researchers. It can be collected by:

• Surveys;
• Interviews;
• Focus groups;
• Questionnaires

Secondary data is the information that is already available and which is used by the researcher as source for data used in his/her research. Different forms of secondary data include:

• Journals;
• Books;
• Census Data;
• Newspaper articles; and
  
• Biographies

. Primary data for the research will be collected mainly through questionnaires. The primary data is concluded through questionnaires, experiments, observations, and interviews. Due to purpose of the research, only the questionnaire method shall be used in the topic and the data can be collected and interpreted in a proper manner. Secondary data will also be used which will have documentation and survey. The documentation will include data from journals, transcripts, database etc. And the data will be in written or verbal form. Survey data will be collected by a survey data form.

Primary is data that you have have to research for yourself while secondary that is that that already exists like library books, other business' records, news papers, discussions with customer and market reports on market sectors.

Primary data is the data which the researcher collects through various methods like interviews, surveys, questionnaires etc. Some advantages and disadvantages of primary data are as follows:

The first advantage of primary data is that it can can be collected from a number of ways like interviews, telephone surveys, focus groups etc. Secondly, it can be also collected across the national borders through emails and posts. Thirdly, it can include a large population and wide geographical coverage. Fourthly, it is relatively cheap and no prior arrangements are required. Moreover, primary data is current and it can better give a realistic view to the researcher about the topic under consideration.

On the other hand, the major disadvantage of primary data is that it has design problems like how to design the surveys. The questions must be simple to design a general lingo (understandable). Some respondents do not give timely responses. Sometimes, the respondents may give fake, socially acceptable and sweet answers and try to cover up the realities. In some primary data collection methods there is no control over the data collection. Incomplete questionnaire always give a negative impact on research.

Data that have been originally collected (raw data) and have not undergone any sort of statistical treatment, are called primary data. While data that have undergone any sort of treatment by statistical methods at least once, i.e. The data have been collected, classified, tabulated or presented in some form for a certain purpose, are called secondary data. The primary data are can be collected by direct personal investigation, indirect investigation or personal interviews. This data can also be obtained via questionnaires and enumerators. Secondary data can be obtained through official and semi-official sources.

Secondary data include both quantitative and qualitative data
raw data or compiled data

Primary Data is what is initially known about the subject/question , Secondary Data is what you find out when you follow up by studying/confirming the primary data.

The data that available in the ram  with which the processor currently working is primary and the data that the ram take from the hard disk is secondary data

Few of the differences between Primary and Secondary data are:

• Primary data takes much more time to be collected
  
• Secondary data is cheaper to collect than primary data
• Primary Data is more details
• Primary data is also provides exact and more to the point information
  

The terms, primary and secondary data are quite often used in research. Primary data is the data that is collected by the researcher himself especially for the purpose of the study at hand. It is collected through firsthand experience. In contrast to this, the secondary data is collected by someone else, other than the researcher. Like it is said there is no point in reinventing the wheel and same is the case with secondary data. Someone else collected the data for his/her research that is also fit to use for your study then you do not need to recollect it, you can use it and it will be called a secondary source of data. For example census data is primary for the government but for other researchers, it is a secondary source, they do not need to re do it.

Source, uses of data

Define the difference between primary and secondary social groups

Secondary data includes both quantitative and qualitative data,
raw data, or compiled data.