Dissertation Secondary Research In 4 Easy Steps! | Assignment Help
Primary v/s Secondary Research for Dissertation
Primary research basically involves gathering all the data for your research first-hand, by conducting survey, interviews, experiments, etc.
On the other hand, when you opt for Secondary Research, you derive conclusions on the basis of data that has already been synthesized and compiled by others. This is a much more cost efficient, and time-saving process, and it saves you tons of efforts.
Secondary Research in 4 Easy Steps
In this article, we have explained how you can do your secondary research in 4 easy steps.
Step 01: Mapping out the Research Questions
With the complexity and vastness of knowledge, it is impossible to cover every single topic, or even half of the topics in a certain subject during research. So, like in any other research method, the first thing you’ll need is the research questions in order to map out the area of your research. At undergraduate level, you are usually provided with the research questions by your professors but at higher levels, you need to take this step yourself.
To formulate the research question, first select the topic you’re interested in. For instance, we can assume that you might want to understand the behavior patterns of a certain animal (i.e. A dog), etc.
Once you have selected your topic of interest, do some reviewing to find out any gap in that topic, which you can fill with your own research. You might find that any previous researcher hasn’t written about a certain part of that topic. For example, you might find out that there’s no literature about why dogs are so loyal. (Just an assumption).
Next, you’ll have to come up with your research question. For example, you can base your research around the topic, why are dogs so loyal?
And voila, you are done with the first step of your secondary research.
Step 02: Searching For a Secondary Data Set
Okay, so now that you have your research question ready, you’ll need to find out how you can incorporate and use the data from research works done in the past, by other researchers, to answer your own research question.
You can do this by simply reviewing the literature related to your topic of interest. During this process, you’ll find that you can use some of the data collected by other individuals and organizations, to answer your own research question.
Once you have found your secondary data set, you’ll have to contact the authors of that research to ask for permission to use their data.
You’ll also need to explain why that particular data set is useful for your research and what you can derive from it.
Step 03: Evaluation of the Secondary Data Set You Chose
Now, research work done by other people can have inconsistencies with your research; some may have a different format or purpose, and some might even be unreliable or inauthentic.
So, you’ll have to make a though evaluation of the secondary data set you chose, and confirm if that data set is appropriate for your data or not. Incorporation of inconsistent data in your work may result in lack of reliability, or even incorrect conclusions.
Make sure you know about the aim of the secondary data set, its authors and their views, the methods used to derive that data, and the date that research was conducted. After knowing these things carefully judge if that data is consistent with yours or not.
If you find out that the data is not a good fit for your research work, you’ll have to switch to a different secondary data set.
Step 04: Preparation & Analysis of the Secondary Data.
When you have confirmed that the secondary data is completely in line with your own research, you can move on to the next step which is to prepare all the secondary data set and analyze it according to the desired analytical techniques, in order to draw the result.
For this, first thing you’ll need to do is to indicate all the variables of interest that you’ll be incorporating in your research work. This will include any characteristics which can have different values, for example color, species, height, size, etc.
Next, we’ll need to identify the missing data and assign variables for that. We will need observations and questionnaires if we are dealing with qualitative data. After doing this, we’ll be computing the data, if necessary.
Last but not the least, we will have to analyze the data to derive a result for our research question. For this, we need to choose an appropriate analysis technique. The analysis techniques for quantitative analysis may include cross-tabulation, MaxDiff analysis, conjoint analysis, TURF analysis, etc. For qualitative analysis we can use IPA, GT, Discourse Analysis, etc.
And that’s it. You have the answer to your research questions and your work is complete.
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