ABSTRACT
This chapter examines two similar but analytically separable sources of data employed by organizational researchers. First, archival research, in which the investigator analyses existing documents, statistical sources and other media, will be examined. In such research, new data are not created, though a great deal of detective work may be required to generate the necessary information. As a category of research, it subsumes a wide variety of different kinds of investigation. Second, the secondary analysis of existing social survey data will be explored. Here, the researcher analyses survey data collected by someone else. While secondary analysis of previously collected data can be undertaken in relation to the product of most of the methods encountered in this book, it tends to occur most frequently in connection with survey data deriving from interviews and questionnaires, in part because data deriving from such investigations are often lodged in ‘data archives’, such as the Economic and Social Research Council Data Archive in the UK and the International Consortium for Political and Social Research in the USA.
