Research is conducted for a dissertation to get
an idea of facts and figures that will be useful on a variety of levels.
Whether you are writing a dissertation or want to put together a report,
research will play a key part in helping you collect information for it. There
are two types of research that help in collecting data for various purposes;
primary and secondary research.
While primary research is all
about gathering new data that has not been collected before, secondary research
is all about using the already existing data for your specific purposes.primary
data can include surveys using questionnaires or interviews with groups of
people in a focus group and secondary data can be getting information from
books, journals or any report that has been compiled by someone else.
Difference between Primary and
Secondary Research
Primary research is specifically
designed to meet your unique and specific needs. The research is mainly conducted
by you, or by someone who you hire specifically for the project. The research
can include focus groups, surveys, interviews, and observations.
Primary research aims to
answer questions that are relevant to your project. If you have been given to
write a dissertation, an essay or a thesis, primary research will help you come
up with answers to the questions that the topic has put forward. The best thing
about using primary research for your project is that it offers more specific
results and you will be able to come up with ways and means to get answers to
all the research questions that have been put forward to you.
On the other hand, secondary
research can be defined as an analysis and interpretation of primary
research. It uses primary research in
order to interpret the results and explains the main idea or findings for
working on a research paper or dissertation.
Primary research is based on
raw data while secondary research is based on the analysis and interpreted
information. While the former is conducted by the researcher for the sole
purpose of coming up with the right insight and information about the subject
and topic, the latter is conducted by someone else and it does not require the
limitation of time and place where it was conducted. It could have been conducted
anywhere by anyone and it can be used by anyone anywhere.
Primary data is specified
according to the needs of the researcher because the techniques and the methods
used are specially developed for the purpose but secondary data is no specific
and in most of the cases, it is generalized data that can be used by the
researchers for their particular needs.
The differences do not end
here as the process of conducting primary and secondary research is also very
different; while the primary method of research keeps the
researcher involved and present in all the aspects, the secondary research
methods do not require the researcher to play an active part as the information
and data is there and can be collected by anyone who requires it.
In addition to this, the
difference in costs is also very apparent. While the primary research costs
more because it is more specified according to the needs of the study,
secondary research does not cost more as there is nothing to be done and all
the research is already there.
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