validity and reliability of secondary sources

Using another format in data collection that is not related to your research format can give biased and invalid results. The format of the data can be totally different and the researcher cannot use it in his research. In secondary sources the format of the data should also be seen before using it in the research. Secondary sources are usually preferred in the research because of their ease of availability, in case it is hard to collect data using secondary sources the researcher should not use it. To obtain highly rigorous, scientific and valid data from secondary sources you need to work hard as such data is hardly available in secondary sources. In these publications writers can distort the facts to make the situation look better or worse.Īvailability of data is another issue in using secondary sources. Most of the time such writings are opinion-based and they are far from facts.

Newspapers, magazines and websites do not use rigorous and well-controlled methods in documentation. Personal diaries and other records like newspapers, mass media products can be biased. Some secondary sources like personal records can be highly biased and they may be not.

In secondary sources the chances of bias are higher as compared to that in primary sources. While using secondary sources of information it should be well-researched that the content is genuine and authentic. Valid means that the data represents original and true findings and it has been collected using scientific methods. Other sources might not be as much reliable and they should only be used when no other data is available. Some secondary sources are as much reliable as primary sources like census as it covers the whole population. Validity and reliability are very important concerns in research and they cannot be taken for granted. These problems can be eliminated to some extent where possible. Primary sources like experiments are very reliable and valid as compared to the secondary sources. The actual and the most basic issue is always with the validity and reliability of the source from which the data is taken. Secondary sources are very helpful in conducting research but there are some problems associated with the use of these sources. In other researches the researcher knows that the secondary sources are as much reliable as primary sources and therefore he uses secondary sources. There are several reasons for that, in many cases primary data is not available and therefore the researcher uses secondary sources. In research secondary sources of data collection and information are as important as primary sources.

Validity and reliability of secondary sources