Mistakes to avoid during secondary research

Mistakes to avoid during secondary research

Secondary research replaces a primary research effort and reduces the time & resources required to collect & analyze information and improve usability & speed of delivery.

Going through a secondary research project can be like a treasure hunt — you may not always find what you’re looking for, but along the way, you’ll certainly find some great and interesting stuff.

Here are some of the things that can go wrong during your secondary research:

Selection errors

A selection error is a kind of sampling error that occurs because of an inherent bias on the part of the researcher. This may happen when the data selected for analysis is inaccurate or inadequate. All market research can be vulnerable to some degree to selection errors. Here’s where strategic measures to minimize impact and other ways to account for it.

Errors that can invalidate data

In this age of increasing data, there is a greater tendency toward data manipulation. The accuracy and validity of the obtained data need to be checked. In the case of secondary data, it might be contaminated due to some inappropriate or negligent actions of a crucial mass of leadership or the organization handling it.

Broadly such errors may be caused by:?

  • data alteration,
  • the ambiguity of concerned stakeholders, and?
  • conceptual errors.

Data reformulation errors?

Secondary data in market research is not always directly beneficial to the analyst because it does not appropriately measure the subject under consideration. Errors are frequently the outcome of one of the four conditions listed below:???

Circumstantial change

Such a type of error occurs due to sudden changes in conditions that somehow significantly affect the outcome of the research. It can be as big as a geographical change or as meager as a unit of measurement change. And there are at least two ways of altering the particulars.

Due to inappropriate transformations

Original data is frequently offered in secondary data sources in categories established to make the data more presentable in a tabular style, or the original categories do not represent the demands of the analyst to manage the work at hand.

Errors due to misrepresentation

No matter whether the whole research process is carried out was done perfectly, a glitch as small as a misplaced decimal or any grammatical error can manipulate the whole meaning or miscommunicate any information.

Errors due to collection procedures to

The collection methods in which the researcher might have collected data may not be the best suited to those conditions.

Final notes

Market research is time-consuming as it involves research related to a certain market, niche, or even product. Since there may be a multitude of competitors in the market, the competitiveness varies from one industry to another. As you go about with research, data collection may be too much to handle. Secondary data sources help you find information that you need without having to reinvent the wheel.


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