Year: 2013
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Advantages and Disadvantages of Secondary Data Collection
(Updated 16 March 2026) Secondary data remains one of the most important resources in social research, business studies, public policy, and the digital humanities. Its traditional strengths—saving time, reducing costs, and enabling large-scale analysis—still hold. However, the research environment has changed considerably. Today, digitized archives, open-data portals, research repositories, and AI-assisted tools have made…
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What is secondary data and where is located?
Secondary data is usually defined in opposition to primary data. The latter is directly obtained from first-hand sources by mean of questionnaire, observation, focus group or in-depth interviews, while the former refers to data collected by someone other than the user. In other words, data that has already been collected for some other purpose. Yet, such data may…
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Why the qualitative approach is essential for every research project?
“Recently, it was conducted a global survey which sought to answer the following question: Please answer honestly. How in your opinion could be solved the problem of lack of food in many countries in the world?” The survey was a failure because in Africa nobody knew what food means. In France nobody knew what honesty…
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Imagine a conversation between the qualitative and quantitative approach!
(Needless to say that if case Qualitative would be feminine and quantitative masculine) – Mr. Quantitative: we need to find out social causal relationships -Mrs. Qualitative: why? -Mr. Quantitative: obviously, to be able to do law-like generalizations like natural scientist do! -Mrs. Qualitative: It is not possible because relationships of human beings might be spurious. –…
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Identifying Valid Research: Key Signs to Look For
updated 16 march 2026 The word research is everywhere. We hear it in political speeches, in television reports, in newspaper headlines, and in advertising. Politicians justify decisions by saying they are based on “research.” Media outlets report the results of polls and surveys as if they automatically represented reliable knowledge. Companies promote products by referring…
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Observation and ethnography: what to observe?
Before moving on to the proper observation, researcher should have prevously selected the setting (where and when) as well as the actions to be documented (e.g. buying process) and a carefully description of the field, concentrating on aspects relevant to research question. Subsequently, researcher or observers hired for such reason will start the fieldwork, i.e.…
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6 essentials of observational studies
The development of observation and ethnography may strongly depend on the variety applied. How far observation is revealed to those who are observed, how far researcher participates or how systematic the collection of data is, gives way to the different varieties to be applied. Regardless such differences that may be looked up in the references,…
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How to use observation method
This post aims to explain how to use observation or related methods such as ethnography in social research. Hence the post is divided in three sections. First one aims to answer what does this method mean and come from, second one, what does it make observation different from other methods as in-depth interview or focus…
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10-step checklist to conduct a focus group
1. Ice breaking part. “Have you got some problems to find this place“ 2. Gratefulness. “Thanks you for having agreed to the meeting“ 3. Research purpose: “This interview is part of a greater research project on…“ 4. Inform about confidentiality: “Nothing said by the participant will be attributed to them“ 5. Request to record the…
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The role of a focus group moderator
In general, moderator should be “flexible, objective, empathic, persuasive, a good listener” (Fontana and Frey 2000, p. 652) In a ideal focus group, the moderator would just participate to put research topics. It is participants who must dominate the discussion. However, there are a number of situations where moderator should also participate. 1. To prevent…