How To Conduct Secondary Research For Your Dissertation?

Secondary research is a type of research in which researchers depends upon the existing data which has been already researched for the specific topic.

Basically, secondary data relies on the data provided by the primary research and this is the reason researchers most of combine both data to collect the required information. Here it is becoming a bit confusing about primary and secondary research. So, take a look below to know the difference between both primary and secondary.

Key differences: Primary Vs secondary research

• While doing primary research, consumes a lot of time because there is not any existing research available or Primary data refers to information gathered directly through first-hand experiences (DWH, 2022). Whilesecondary research is done based on primary research. In short, it relies solely upon primary research.

• Data for Primary research can be collected through personal experience, observations, questionnaires, surveys, etc. while; secondary data for secondary research can be collected through journals, books, articles. Websites, etc.

• Individuals who are involved in the collecting of data and also analyzing the data are involved in primary data analysis, whereas individuals who are not even involved in the acquisition of data are involved in secondary data analysis (Church, Russell M, 2002).

Primary research is the most time-consuming research. Therefore, most of the researchers avoid it and prefer to do secondary research. Therefore, to make it effective you need to follow some guidelines to conduct secondary research.

Steps to conduct the secondary research

• Identify the topic

• Identify the resources

• Note down the data that is already researched

• Note down your data also

• Compare both existing and current data

• Analyze the entire data.

Identify the topic

First of all, identify a topic about which you want to answer. Therefore, ask yourself what is the reason behind this research then you will what type of answer you should get from the research.

This section might require both primary and secondary research because sometimes combining both types of research can provide you with unique and relevant information.

Identify the resources

For secondary research, you only need to find the existing sources. Therefore, you need to do enough research to collect all the sources and make sure while searching for those resources use relevant keywords because keywords play a vital role in the research. Using an AI based tool like SciSummary can help summarize research papers, saving you a lot of time to focus on other areas in need.

List down the data that is already researched

After conducting the resources, read all the resources carefully. After reading them, note down all the relevant information to yourself. Make sure it should be separated from your own information.

Write down your knowledge

In secondary research, you need to conduct research that has already been conducted by researchers. You just have to extract the relevant information according to your specified topic.

Further, you will also have to add your own information which you have learnt from the researches or something that you already know about your specified topic no matter it is primary or secondary information.

Compare both information

A dissertation is a very long essay on a particular subject in which huge information should be added. Therefore, you have to do a lot of secondary research and also you have to add the information which you already know. Later, you need to compare both the information and extract the relevant and unique information from both primary and secondary research.

Analyze the entire data

This is the very last step which is very important because in this step you need to check out the entire information which you have added is relevant or not. Ask yourself whether it is giving an ultimate solution to your problem or not. Do you understand the information that you have extracted from the internet? If it feels like an incomplete solution then starts it again and add some extra knowledge that can satisfy you.

Sources to conduct secondary research

Some of the best sources to conduct secondary research are given below…

Books

• Books are always being a great source to collect any type of knowledge. They can provide secondary research in a very huge quantity.

• The only thing is you need to identify the appropriate book according to your chosen topic.

Journals

• Do you know the major difference between journals and books? Basically, books are the ones that update their information after much time. On the other hand, journals are the ones that update their information regularly.

• Therefore, sometimes journals provide better and updated information as compared to books.

Websites

• Today, there are hundreds of websites available that provide the same information, you can look for services to buy dissertationand you will get numerous results, but you have to choose carefully.

• While choosing the best website for secondary research is also important because not every website provides relevant and authentic information.

Blogs

• There are numerous blogs sharing information on the same topic, but each blog contains a different type of information.

• This is the reason; blogs are considered are the best source to conduct secondary research.

Public libraries

• These Public libraries are the greatest source of collecting secondary research data because public libraries mostly contain copies of original data which was researched earlier.

Internet

• Today, the internet has become a very important aspect of student’s life. It does not only help students to get knowledge. Students even use it whenever they look best dissertation writer, best assignment writer and for many other purposes.

• It can provide them with whatever information they require because the internet is full of information.

Final words

Both primary and secondary research is useful to complete a dissertation. Even most of the time researchers combine data that has been collected through both primary and secondary both. It helps them to extract the relevant information from both types of research. Furthermore, this article will help you to understand how much secondary information is important for the dissertation and how it should be conducted.

References

Church, Russell M, 2002. “The effective use of secondary data.” Available at:https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0023969001910987 [Accessed March 3, 2022].

DWH, 2022. Primary vs secondary data. Dissertation WritingHelp. Available at: https://dissertationwritinghelp.uk/primary-vs-secondary-data/ [Accessed March 3, 2022].