Impact of Secondary use of Data Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Impact of Secondary use of Data - Essay Example In this scenario, secondary data is data that has already been collected by someone else for a different purpose and we want to use it. Some of the common examples of data collection could be: data presented by an organization for its business marketing, gathered by a hospitality firm on its guests by using its guest history system, annual business reports or Government statistics and figures (Thames Valley University, 2010). On the other hand data can be used in different scenarios such as: someone can simply present the original data in its unchanged format. In this scenario, probably this data will be used in the introduction or literature review as support or proof for their argument. A person can also make use of this data in a different way if this data is utilized (for analysis or interpretation) for a wide variety of purposes than the original then the most likely place would be in the ‘analysis of findings’ part of a research report or thesis. For instance, a research work carried out on suicide issue can comprise the official suicide data of different countries or regions (which was collected by government or their equivalent) and evaluate this data to determine if they could categorize variables that would indicate that some people are more likely to commit suicide as compared to others (Thames Valley University, 2010). However, there are numerous issues involved with the secondary usage of data. This paper will discuss the secondary uses of data, some of its advantages and disadvantages. In the end, this paper will discuss issues with secondary usage of data and laws to deal with these issues. Secondary Use of Data: An Overview No doubt secondary research can be considered as the most extensively used technique for collecting data as this process of data collection engages retrieving information that is previously collected from either the inventor or a distributor of primary research. In addition, secondary data comprises the information and data collected from third-party sources for instance a business website, sales and accounting records, marketing research reports and magazine articles. Moreover, it can also comprise any already collected information utilized by the vendor from any external or internal source (BlogSpot, 2008; Thames Valley University, 2010). Advantages of Secondary Use of Data In fact, there are a lot of benefits of making use of the s econdary data or research. First of the most important advantages of using secondary data is that it is relatively easy get access to a wide variety of sources of secondary data. Some time ago secondary data collection required business marketers or sales management to spend a lot of time in libraries, or wait for reports to be received via mail. On the other hand, at the present there exist a number of modern technologies for data collection for instance with the availability of the Internet and online access to a lot of digital resources, the access to the secondary data and information has become very simple. In fact, the Internet has become a convenient and usually standardized tool for all sources of secondary research. In addition, by making use of the secondary data researchers can be able to get access to important data and information for small or in many cases absolutely no cost to acquire. For that reason, this secondary data is much more affordable and less expensive as compared to other methods of data collection where researchers perform the research themselves. Additionally, the use of secondary data allows researchers to make clear the research problem. In many cases, secondary data is utilized before primary