Question

What are primary data and secondary data? which of the two is more reliable and why?

Answer 1

The fundamental differences between primary and secondary data are discussed in the following points:

1. The term primary data refers to the data originated by the researcher for the first time. Secondary data is the already existing data, collected by the investigator agencies and organisations earlier.
2. Primary data is a real-time data whereas secondary data is one which relates to the past.
3. Primary data is collected for addressing the problem at hand while secondary data is collected for purposes other than the problem at hand.
4. Primary data collection is a very involved process. On the other hand, secondary data collection process is rapid and easy.
5. Primary data collection sources include surveys, observations, experiments, questionnaire, personal interview, etc. On the contrary, secondary data collection sources are government publications, websites, books, journal articles, internal records etc.
6. Primary data collection requires a large amount of resources like time, cost and manpower. Conversely, secondary data is relatively inexpensive and quickly available.
7. Primary data is always specific to the researcher’s needs, and he controls the quality of research. In contrast, secondary data is neither specific to the researcher’s need, nor he has control over the data quality.
8. Primary data is available in the raw form whereas secondary data is the refined form of primary data. It can also be said that secondary data is obtained when statistical methods are applied to the primary data.
9. Data collected through primary sources are more reliable and accurate as compared to the secondary sources.

Conclusion

As can be seen from the above discussion that primary data is an original and unique data, which is directly collected by the researcher from a source according to his requirements. As opposed to secondary data which is easily accessible but are not pure as they have undergone through many statistical treatments.