Types of Data Sources

Secondary Research

Secondary research is gathering information from other people's primary research.

Common forms are books, journals, newspaper articles, media reports, and other polished accounts of data. Most report writers will use secondary sources for their business reports in order to gather, curate, and present the material in a new, updated and helpful manner. Using secondary research is far less costly, more efficient, and requires less time to gather data from already developed sources.

In business, where everything has a cost, we may argue for maximizing secondary sources alone because primary research is expensive and time consuming. That said, primary and secondary data should interact, and as discussed, we gather primary data when we find gaps in the already available secondary sources.

Secondary sources analyze, review, or summarize information in primary resources or other secondary resources. Even sources presenting facts or descriptions about events are secondary unless they are based on direct participation or observation.

One example of secondary research is this McKinsey and Company report on the Future of Work After Covid 19. Note how they have summarized other sources in a manageable report. Scroll through the entire article to see how they have summarized data from the US Department of Labor and the US Bureau of Labor Statistics alongside advice for the future from their company.