[Year 12 Its] Primary vs Secondary Data Sources

[Bicknell, Paul P]

________________________________

From: is-bounces at edulists.com.au on behalf of Kevork Krozian
Sent: Thu 5/19/2005 12:25 PM
To: is at edulists.com.au
Subject: Re: [Year 12 Its] Primary vs Secondary Data Sources
In the context of the following
 
< Many texts make the distinction between primary and secondary as not the amount of "interpretation" or "reworking" of <the data as the criterion for it transforming to secondary data, but the level of separation from the Information System in <question. Eg. Building Information Systems Fitzpatrcik et al p 107 -- " .. primary data directly from the people and documents <associated with the information system and its problems. Secondary data is collected from people and documents one step <removed and not directly linked to the information system and its problems".
 
I think the "information system and its problems" is in the context of a project of investigation, for example the marketing department may carry out a customer satisfaction survey and this would be considered secondary because it was carried out by a group not directly involver withe the information system maintenance.
And a computer log is primary because the human role in collection is not direct and not interpreted and it is collected directly from the information system that is being investigated
 
Primary data:
Data that has been collected by yourself (or project team)
 
 Secondary data: 
data that has been collected by others, who maybe employed by the same company but the data collection methods have not been directly under control of yourself or the project team.


The amount of processing is not important but rather who controlled the collection, for example a survey by me or people managed by me is primary but a identical survey by other than me or managed by me is secondary. Me being head of the project or team. The interpretation methods and extent of data transformation may be identical but the deciding factor is who did it. If you and you team did not carry out the survey the results automatically become less reliable and deemed a secondary source of data.





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