What are secondary data? Which of the two - the primary or the secondary data - is more reliable and why?
Secondary data refers to data that is collected by someone other than the user. Common sources of secondary data for social science include censuses, information collected by government departments, organizational records and data that was originally collected for other research purpose.
Primary data is more reliable than secondary data because primary data are collected by doing original research and not through secondary sources that may subject to some errors or discrepancy and may even contain ut-dated information. Secondary data are less reliable than primary data.