SECONDARY DATA ANALYSIS

By Gurtez Singh Rajinder Singh Suryapartap Singh

FILL THE GAP BETWEEN MANAGEMENT

QUESTION AND RESEARCH QUESTION

Define

your management dilemma Consult handbooks, textbooks relevant to mang. Dilemma Locate And Review secondary resources for relevance Evaluate the value of each source and its contend

SECONDARY DATA

Secondary data is the data that have been already collected by and readily available from other sources . They are pieces of information that have already been collected for a different purpose, but may be relevant to the research problems at hand

Primary Data
Needs more funds. Investigating Agency collects the data. Requires longer time for collection. More reliable and suitable to the enquiry because the investigator himself collects it. Requires elaborate organisation

Secondary Data
Needs comparatively less funds . Some other investigating agency collects it for its own use. Requires less time for collection. Less reliable and suitable as someone else has done that job of collection which may not serve the purpose. No need of any organizational set up.

No extra precautions are required. Secondary data need more care and attention.

TYPES OF INFORMATION SOURCES

Indexes and Bibliography (online catalog) Dictionaries (Federal Reserve Bank of Chicagos Glossaries of Financial terms) Encyclopedia(Encyclopedia of company history) Handbooks Directories

TWO DIFFERENT RESEARCH STRANDS FOR SECONDARY DATA

Quantitative: Census, housing, social security as well as electoral statistics and other related databases. Qualitative: Semi-structured and structured , focus groups transcripts, field notes, observation records and other personal, research-related documents.

EVALUATING INFORMATION SOURCES

Purpose Scope Authority Audience Format

IMPORTANCE/USEFULNESS
Secondary

data are useful for addressing a number of research questions, for example:
Estimating market potential Analyzing competitors Sales forecasting Assessing industry trends Alerting the manager to potential problems Providing preliminary information to guide subsequent primary data collection

EXTERNAL SOURCES OF SECONDARY DATA

publications Census, Bureau of Labor Statistics, etc. Trade Associations - Newsletters, special reports, annual state of the industry reports, etc. Other publications - periodicals (e.g., WSJ, Fortune), annual reports, Moodys, Dun & Bradstreet Computer retrievable databases (syndicated) - Lexis/Nexis, scanner data Internet
Government

GOVERNMENT INFORMATION
Govt sources are very important sources of secondary data. For example US govt as a whole is considered largest publishing body in this world Searching data here is a tedious task But it can provide relevant information of

Changing social, demographic and economic factors Changing laws and regulations and their potential impact on business Authenticated maps and designs etc

INTERNET

Sorry

MINING INTERNAL RESOURCES

Internal resources Information of our own company They include

Data marts Data warehouses

DATA MINING
It is defined as the process of discovering knowledge from the data base stored in data marts or data warehouse It is a useful tool that combines exploratory any discovery data with confirmatory facts It may fill in many loopholes But it can only be helpful if it is organized

DATA WAREHOUSE

It is an electronic repository that organizes large volumes of data into the categories that Facilitate
Retrieval Interpretation Sorting

Data warehouse is dynamically assessable and used for data retrieval very often.

DATA MARTS

A data mart is the access layer of the data warehouse environment that is used to get data out to the users. The data mart is a subset of the data warehouse which is usually oriented to a specific business line or team.

REASONS FOR CREATING A DATA MART

Easy access to frequently needed data Creates collective view by a group of users Improves end-user response time Ease of creation Lower cost than implementing a full data warehouse Potential users are more clearly defined than in a full data warehouse

DATA MINING PROCESS

Sample Decide between sample and census Explore Identify relationship within data Modify- Modify or transform data Model- Develop a model to establish relationship Assess Test models accuracy

SUMMARY OF KEY POINTS

Secondary

data are information previously gathered for a different purpose that may be relevant to the problem at hand. Secondary data can come from sources internal to the organization or external. The internet has, in many ways, enabled the gathering of secondary data. Secondary data are generally useful, low-cost, rapidly available sources of information.