I received several requests to tell you a bit more about the difference
between primary and secondary research methods
and explain a bit when we use the first and when the second.
The most basic distinction between primary and secondary research is this..
Primary research is when we use original data.
It is simply put, new data. Secondary research is when we study the results of others.
Because these results are often published in scientific journals and books,
we also refer to this as a literature study.
And because you often sit behind a desk reading these articles,
it’s also named desk research.
Secondary research is basically the systematic review of existing knowledge.
So when do scholars perform primary or secondary research?
Well, often we do both in different stages of a larger study.
Let’s say I’m interested in the effects of fear appeals in anti-smoking campaigns.
More specifically: I want to know if a Dutch anti-smoking campaign
should make more use of them in order to become more effective.
I will start by exploring the existing literature on the use of fear appeals,
anti-smoking campaigns, health campaigns in general,
studies in to why people smoke, when people block fear appeals, et cetera.
I systematically collect all of this secondary data, basically the research findings of others,
and analyze these results in order to come up with some expectations
of what would happen if we would use more fear appeals in Dutch anti-smoking campaigns.
In some cases, if time, money or practicality forces us to limit ourselves to a literature study,
this is where my research ends.
But often, if I want to really understand something and delve deeper in to the question,
I want to study this further and in more detail.
Existing studies might have been conducted in other countries for instance,
so I’m wondering if these results will also be true in the NL.
Or, it’s also possible no study has looked specifically at this target group
or what happens over a prolonged period in time.
In short: A review of the existing literature can leave us with a thousand questions
and things we want to check or explore in more detail.
So now I need to conduct my own, primary, research.
My desk research has left me with several research hypotheses
that we will set out to prove or disprove with original data.
If the research findings you find in the literature are reliable
I should be able to replicate them. This is why replication of existing studies,
sometimes with only one small variation,
is an important scientific tool. In order to be sure of what we know, we keep checking it
and keep changing the research context slightly to see if that makes a difference.
Of course next to checking the reliability of existing data,
primary research also allows us to radically expand on existing knowledge
by adding completely new research variables,
leading to new insights into previously unexplored relationships.
So in a nutshell: we usually start with secondary research.
That’s why, whenever we discuss research methods,
we should not forget this important category.
Many questions have already been asked and answered by scholars all over the world
and a systematic review of existing data will allow us
to formulate hypotheses and more specific research questions.
The introduction of digital search engines has greatly increased our ability
to find and use existing studies, our ability ‘to stand on the shoulders of giants’ as it were.
Famous words by Newton, now the motto of Google Scholar.
After we have studied existing knowledge we test our expectations
and further expand on this by conducting our own primary research,
if we have the time and money that is.