primary and secondary data + meta analysis

• -          a limitation of meta analysis is that it is susceptible to publication bias such as the file drawer problem may be present – this is when the researcher intentionally does not publish all the data from the relevant studies but instead chooses to leave out the negative results which in turn gives a false representative of what the researcher was investigating
• -          a strength of meta analysis is that more generalisability is possible as a larger amount of data is studied and the researcher is able to view the evidence with more confidence as there is a lot of it
• -          meta analysis – is when a researcher re analyses primary data sources form a number of pieces of research and combines the results from many different studies and uses all data to form an overall view of the subject they are investigating – the combination results in a larger sample size and can identify trends that are not apparent in a single study
• -          limitations of secondary data is that is may be likely that the data is outdated or incomplete or the data may not be reliable since the researcher was not there when the study was conducted so is likely to be unsure about the validity of results
• -          a strength of secondary data is that is accessible so requires minimal effort to collect and is inexpensive on the researcher
• -          secondary data is when information is collected by someone else other than the researcher but it is used by the researcher for their investigation – this data can be accessed via websites , books and government reports and secondary data is usually collected to provide a starting point of what is already known about a specific topic and is not carried out specifically for the study and you can then decide in which the direction you want to take your research after collecting secondary data
• -          a limitation of primary data is that is can be expensive and requires a lot of time and effort
• -          a strength of primary data is that it targets the exact information which the researcher needs therefore the data fits their aim and objectives
• -          primary data – this is information obtained first hand by the researcher of the investigating and can be qualitative or quantitative – can be obtained using a variety of methods like questionaries' and interviews , experiments and observations that has not been published before and all primary data is collected specifically for the research being carried out