Utilising secondary data - Types of secondary data and uses in research

5 important questions on Utilising secondary data - Types of secondary data and uses in research

We find it useful to group the different forms of secondary data into three broad types, which ones?

- survey, including census, continuous, regular and ad-hoc surveys;
- document, be they text or visual media;
- compiled from multiple sources to create a snapshot, time series or continually updated dataset.

What does survey secondary data refer to?

It refers to existing data originally collected for some other purpose using a survey strategy, usually questionnaires.

Such data normally refer to organizations, people or households.

They are made available either as compiled data tables or, increasingly frequently, in structured form as a downloadable matrix of data for secondary analysis.

What is a census survey strategy?

- usually carried out by governments
- participation is obligatory, consequently, they provide very good coverage of the population from who data are collected.
- usually clearly defined, well documented and of a high quality.
- easily accessible in compiled form and are widely used by other organizations and individual researchers.
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What are Ad-hoc surveys?

Ad-hoc surveys are usually one-off surveys and are far more specific in their subject matter.
They include data from questionnaires that have been undertaken by independent researchers as well as interviews undertaken by organizations and governments.

Multiple-souce secondary data =

Different data sets have been combined to form another data set prior to you accessing the data.

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