Introduction to Communication Science week 6: 6.5 Primary and Secondary Research

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Transcript of all Week 6 videos: https://d396qusza40orc.cloudfront.net/commscience/transcripts%2FTranscript_Week_6%20Coursera.pdf

This lecture in .webm: http://d396qusza40orc.cloudfront.net/commscience/recoded_videos%2F6.5.7cd746970c5ff267579627d603f0e07a.webm

2. In the Coursera site, but apparently unaffected by the login block, for this lecture:

Subtitle text: https://class.coursera.org/commscience-001/lecture/subtitles?q=99_en&format=txt
Video mp4: https://class.coursera.org/commscience-001/lecture/download.mp4?lecture_id=99

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Week 6 description:
Student questions and debate
This week I will be discussing student questions from the forum and subjects that we did not have time for during the lectures, such as metaphors. I will also tell you a bit about the upcoming exam.

I received several requests to tell you a bit more
about the difference

between primary and secondary research
methods

and explain a bit when we use the first and when
the second.

The most basic distinction between primary and
secondary research is this..

Primary research is when we use original data.

It is simply put, new data. Secondary research
is when we study the results of others.

Because these results are often published in
scientific journals and books,

we also refer to this as a literature study.

And because you often sit behind a desk
reading these articles,

it’s also named desk research.

Secondary research is basically the systematic
review of existing knowledge.

So when do scholars perform primary or
secondary research?

Well, often we do both in different stages of a
larger study.

Let’s say I’m interested in the effects of fear
appeals in anti-smoking campaigns.

More specifically: I want to know if a Dutch anti-
smoking campaign

should make more use of them in order to
become more effective.

I will start by exploring the existing literature on
the use of fear appeals,

anti-smoking campaigns, health campaigns in
general,

studies in to why people smoke, when people
block fear appeals, et cetera.

I systematically collect all of this secondary
data, basically the research findings of others,

and analyze these results in order to come up
with some expectations

of what would happen if we would use more fear
appeals in Dutch anti-smoking campaigns.

In some cases, if time, money or practicality
forces us to limit ourselves to a literature study,

this is where my research ends.

But often, if I want to really understand
something and delve deeper in to the question,

I want to study this further and in more detail.

Existing studies might have been conducted in
other countries for instance,

so I’m wondering if these results will also be true
in the NL.

Or, it’s also possible no study has looked
specifically at this target group

or what happens over a prolonged period in time.

In short: A review of the existing literature can
leave us with a thousand questions

and things we want to check or explore in more
detail.

So now I need to conduct my own, primary,
research.

My desk research has left me with several
research hypotheses

that we will set out to prove or disprove with
original data.

If the research findings you find in the literature
are reliable

I should be able to replicate them. This is why
replication of existing studies,

sometimes with only one small variation,

is an important scientific tool. In order to be sure
of what we know, we keep checking it

and keep changing the research context slightly
to see if that makes a difference.

Of course next to checking the reliability of
existing data,

primary research also allows us to radically
expand on existing knowledge

by adding completely new research variables,

leading to new insights into previously
unexplored relationships.

So in a nutshell: we usually start with secondary
research.

That’s why, whenever we discuss research
methods,

we should not forget this important category.

Many questions have already been asked and
answered by scholars all over the world

and a systematic review of existing data will
allow us

to formulate hypotheses and more specific
research questions.

The introduction of digital search engines has
greatly increased our ability

to find and use existing studies, our ability ‘to
stand on the shoulders of giants’ as it were.

Famous words by Newton, now the motto of
Google Scholar.

After we have studied existing knowledge we
test our expectations

and further expand on this by conducting our
own primary research,

if we have the time and money that is.