Secondary data

Secondary data refers to data that is collected by someone other than the 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. Secondary data means data that are already available i.e., they refer to the data which have already been collected and analysed by someone else. When the researcher utilises secondary data, then he has to look into various sources from where he can obtain them. Primary data: Data collected by the investigator himself/ herself for a specific purpose. Examples: Data collected by a student for his/her thesis or research project. ... Secondary data: Data collected by someone else for some other purpose (but being utilized by the investigator for another purpose).