ABSTRACT
The term archival data refers to data that already exist, such as observations, texts, or other information that predate a planned research project rather than data that are expressly collected for the primary purposes of a particular research project (Fisher & Shultz, 2006; Wang, Barnes-Farrell, & Fisher, 2009). They are often used for secondary data analysis, which constitutes a specific analysis performed after the primary data collection has been completed. Secondary data analyses may represent a reexamination of data for their originally intended purposes, or they may be conducted to address questions that are unrelated to the purposes for which the data were originally collected. As a result, archival data can be used as the focal source of data in a research investigation (e.g., survey data collected and made available as part of a public use data set), or they can be used to supplement another primary data source (e.g., HR or health care administrative records linked to primary survey data; Shultz, Hoffman, & Reiter-Palmon, 2005).
