primary research
Firsthand data collection
Primary research is investigation that gathers new data directly from sources rather than consulting existing studies.
A scientist conducting experiments, a journalist interviewing witnesses, a company running focus groups—all are doing primary research.
The term contrasts with secondary research, which analyzes what others have already collected: Her dissertation required both primary research in the archives and secondary research reviewing the scholarly literature.
- ground truthEmpirically confirmed actual information
- boots on the groundMilitary presence in area
- raw dataUnanalyzed collected information
- from scratchStarting with nothing prepared
- fieldworkResearch conducted on location
in the field · ethnography · surveys · questionnaires · experimental design · case studies · source material · hypothesis testing · interviews · observations · human subjects · focus groups · controlled experiments · clinical trials · data analysis · datasets · data collection · reproducibility
primary researchliterature review
Analysis of prior scholarship
secondary sources · meta-analysis · library research · textual analysis · historiography
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