ABSTRACT
So far in this text we have focused upon collecting primary research data, whether in the form of quantitative or qualitative data. We have made some reference, albeit in a small way, to data of both sorts which already exist and can be accessed and analysed by others (most notably the data deposited at the University of Essex Data Archive). It is not generally the case that undergraduate students are expected to create and analyse large quantities of primary data, due to the time and financial costs involved. It is more usual that you may instead have to interpret data already collected and published. We have dealt with the issue of analysing numerical data in Part I of this text. Indeed, the statistical techniques are the same whether we collect the data ourselves (primary data) or make use of data already interpreted by others (secondary data), although we did point out in Chapter 4 that there may be problems with using data which have already been categorised in a particular way (such as aggregate data in the form of official statistics).
