By Emily Rose TYPES OF RESEARCH

‘Primary research is any type of research that you go out and collect yourself. Examples include surveys, interviews, observations, and ethnographic research.’

Advantages: You can get detailed results suited to what you specifically want to find out; you can focus on what you want to ; you have control of how much/little results you get

Disadvantages: You need to have lots of resources such as questionnaire; research becomes out of date; could be biased if your range of people asked is low.

PRIMARY

‘Secondary research involves the summary, collation and/or synthesis of existing research rather than primary research, where data is collected from, for example, research subjects or experiments’

Advantages: Ease of access; helps to clarify primary research; you get a clear idea and good examples of what to do

Disadvantages: the quality of this research may not be so good and it may not be reliable; not specific to researcher’s needs, some of the information could be incomplete; might be old data.

SECONDARY

‘Quantitative research is about asking people for their opinions in a structured way so that you can produce hard facts and statistics to guide you’

Advantages: Generalises research; you can easily draw a conclusion from your research; quick to do; provides precise data; useful for studying large groups.

Disadvantages: the data might be too abstract for direct application to specific research

QUANTITATIVE

‘Qualitative research is about finding out not just what people think but why they think it. It’s about getting people to talk about their opinions so you can understand their motivations and feelings.’

Advantages: provides in depth detail; creates openness; builds a detailed picture; avoids pre-judgements.

Disadvantages: usually fewer people studied; less easy to generalise; difficult to make systematic comparisons; dependent on skills of the researcher.

QUALITATIVE