Primary/ Secondary data

• Primary data -

  > Gathered directly/ first hand from the participants themselves

  > Specific to the aim of the study

  > Data which is gathered by conducting an experiment or interview would be classed as primary data
• Primary data AO3 -

  :) Primary data is collected first hand from the participant specifically for the aim of the research which allows researchers to specifically target the information that they require and organise and experiment in a way that suits them and their aim

  > Whereas secondary data might not meet the direct needs of the researcher
• Primary data AO3 -

  :( Primary data is conducted by the researcher themselves which involves time and effort to obtain the data as well as analyse the findings

  > Whereas secondary data is easily accessed and requires limited effort to obtain
• Secondary data -

  > Secondary data has previously been collected by a third party

  > Not specific to the aim of the study but used by the researcher

  > Eg. pre-existing data like government statistics
• Secondary data AO3 -

  :) Secondary data is easily accessed and requires minimal effort to obtain. The researcher might find that information that he/she wants to collect already exists

  > Whereas primary data is conducted by themselves which takes time and effort
• Secondary data AO3 -

  :( Secondary data may be poor quality or have inaccuracies. It may appear to be valuable at first but could be out-dated or incomplete and might not meet the direct needs of the researcher

  > Whereas primary data is collected first hand from participants and for the specific aim of the research, increasing the overall internal validity
• Meta analysis

  > Meta-analysis is a form of research method that uses secondary data

  > Gains data from a large number of studies, which have investigated the same research questions and methods of research.

  > It then combines this information from all the studies to make conclusions about behaviour
• Meta-analysis AO3 -

  :) Meta-analysis gather data from a number of studies which allows us to view data with much more confidence and increases the generalisability of the findings across much larger populations
• Meta-analysis AO3 -

  :( Meta-analysis may be prone to publication bias as the researcher may not select all relevant studies, choosing to leave out those studies with negative or non-significant results. Therefore the data from the meta-analysis will be biased because it only represents some of the relevant data and incorrect conclusions are drawn