Primary or Secondary? Types of research

Which best describes secondary research? Research you do which you don’t record yourself Research data which someone has already analysed elsewhere Researching other people’s analyses of data they have gathered Research data you gather yourself off the internet or print sources Research you analyse yourself

Is this secondary research? You record a child speaking, using a storytelling game you found online No, it’s primary: you’re doing the recording and transcripts and analyses – even though you adopted a methodology

Is this secondary research? You select 20 internet forum threads written in 2011 and describe how they work No: It’s primary. Selecting and gathering already-existing data is still data gathering!

Is this secondary research? You ask a number of people what they think they’re doing when they make a grammar error, and write their explanations Yes, this is secondary – if you take their explanations as fact. If you treat it as just more language to study, it’s primary!

Is this secondary research? You find an article about an investigation into text messages, and report their classifications of different types of emoticons Yes, this is secondary – you’re using other people’s analyses of the data.