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Concept
Secondary data
Summary
Secondary data refers to data that is collected by someone other than the primary user. Common sources of secondary data for social science include censuses, information collected by government departments, organizational records and data that was originally collected for other research purposes. Primary data, by contrast, are collected by the investigator conducting the research.
Secondary data analysis can save time that would otherwise be spent collecting data and, particularly in the case of quantitative data, can provide larger and higher-quality databases that would be unfeasible for any individual researcher to collect on their own. In addition, analysts of social and economic change consider secondary data essential, since it is impossible to conduct a new survey that can adequately capture past change and/or developments. However, secondary data analysis can be less useful in marketing research, as data may be outdated or inaccurate.
Secondary data can be obtained from many sources:
censuses and government departments like housing, social security, electoral statistics, tax records
internet searches and libraries
GPS and remote sensing
km progress reports
journals, newspapers and magazines
Government departments and agencies routinely collect information when registering people or carrying out transactions, or for record keeping – usually when delivering a service. This information is called administrative data.
It can include:
personal information such as names, dates of birth, addresses
information about schools and educational achievements
information about health
information about criminal convictions or prison sentences
tax records, such as income
A census is the procedure of systematically acquiring and recording information about the members of a given population. It is a regularly occurring and official count of a particular population. It is a type of administrative data, but it is collected for the purpose of research at specific intervals. Most administrative data is collected continuously and for the purpose of delivering a service to the people.
Official source
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