Understanding Dissertation Primary Research
Part of what you will be required to write in your dissertation is the process you will use to collect data. Therefore, you need to be well-informed of the options you have to do this. It all starts by knowing the different types of data and the ways through which you will accomplish the task. You can take different approaches to collect data. These include:
- Primary Research. This is where you use your chosen means to collect fresh data from a chosen sample population. You will need a tool to help you capture this data and information to help you in writing your dissertation. This is raw data, which you must process and present to make meaningful conclusions out of it. It could be either qualitative or a quantitative approach.
- Secondary Research. In writing your dissertation, you can also choose to entirely draw information from past studies. If your topic and research give room for that, you can easily go through past research to come up with new findings through deductive reasoning and other techniques applied in research.
- Mixed Methods. This is an approach where you make use of both qualitative and quantitative methods to collect data for your study. It may also include the use of secondary sources. This is a strategy that researchers use when they are looking to get more data to analyze and synthesize for their dissertation.
Doing a Primary Research for Your Dissertation
Settling for primary research for your dissertation comes with several requirements. First, you must understand what primary research is all about. You can either choose to apply a qualitative, quantitative or mixed methods approach.
In qualitative research, it means getting responses to open-ended questions. Respondents are not contained by a list of choices that don't allow them to be descriptive in their explanations. On the contrary, quantitative research guides participants to respond in a certain manner. In a mixed-methods approach, it means you want to use both qualitative and quantitative approaches to your study.
Important Tips for Primary Research
As you prepare to pick on primary research, here are important facts that should always come on mind:
- Identify the strengths and limitations. Qualitative research has enough responses to give a good analysis. However, there is quite some work to do to get the result. A quantitative approach is direct but may also be limited in the amount of information you will collect.
- Available options include observations, interviews, case studies or focus groups. Focus groups are interviews done to several individuals at once.
- Choose your participants, decide on the measures, analysis to do and the procedure that you will use in conducting your primary research.
Final Thoughts
Doing primary research is a very great way to come up with new research and findings in your area of study. However, you should get to understand what you need to do to get this method right. There are options to choose from but each one has its strengths and limitations as discussed here!