Is research for literature review classed as secondary data research?

is that process of research where you read peoples articles, journals etc counted as secondary research?

if not, what is secondary research please?

Reply 1

Amanananan

Yes that's secondary research. Anything collated by yourself (interviews, surveys, conversations) those are primary. Anything collated by someone else in secondary.

Reply 2

tinygirl96

Secondary
Anything that is by other people
Primary
Your own work

Reply 3

PhoenixFortune

Original post by manifesting

is that process of research where you read peoples articles, journals etc counted as secondary research?

if not, what is secondary research please?

It depends, are you doing a literature review as a preliminary section before collecting data for a study yourself, or is the literature review the entire piece?

Reply 4

University of Portsmouth Student Rep

Official Rep

Original post by manifesting

is that process of research where you read peoples articles, journals etc counted as secondary research?

if not, what is secondary research please?

Hiya @manifesting!

Every dissertation will differ depending on the course and university. For example, some dissertations are 5,000 whereas others are 10,000. This will then affect how many words your lit review will be.

Typically a dissertation structure will be based upon 4 or 5 chapters. These chapters will usually be an introduction to your topic, a literature review, your methodology (where you will use primary or secondary data), results of your research and a discussion of the results.

Your literature review collates research on your research topic. I've chosen to use a table to list all the research papers in my dissertation. This means i can easily view their title, their methodology, their findings, their limitations etc. so could be a good method for you to! Once you get a better idea of the existing literature it will help you fine tune your title.

Primary/ secondary research is part of the third chapter. In basic terms, primary research is where you directly collect your own data using quantitative or qualitative methods. Whereas, secondary research is where you rely on existing data and do not collect your own data first hand.

I recommend emailing your supervisor or personal tutor for some more information to help you :smile:

Sam- Official Student Rep :smile:

Reply 5

A.A Yakub

Original post by PhoenixFortune

It depends, are you doing a literature review as a preliminary section before collecting data for a study yourself, or is the literature review the entire piece?

A very good question as the can be a YES or NO..... depending on your response to the question posed

Reply 6

A.A Yakub

If you are doing a literature review as a preliminary section before collecting data for a study then your literature review is not termed "secondary source of data". While all cited sources in this section are all secondary data, but in as much as it is not what you are presenting as your result that would be analysed, then it's not secondary data source

However, if the entire piece article being written by you is 'literature review' as in systematic literature review (SLR), Bibliometrics etc, then since its only the literature gathered that is presented and analysed, then the literature becomes a secondary data source