What is the difference between primary and secondary research?!?

Question

What is the difference between primary and secondary research?!?

Answer 1

Primary research is research conducted and reported by the researcher. Secondary research is cand be 1. research reported by a secondary sources or 2. research about research (meta-analysis). Primary tends to be viewed as "stronger" research, especially with repeated replicable results or cumulative similar results.

Answer 2

Primary research is "first person," and is discovered by you and only by you. If you interview a subject, that would be an example of primary research. If you conduct a scientific experiment and record your results, that would be primary research. Primary research is something you did yourself and no one else has access to the knowledge you gained unless and until you choose to share your research results.

Secondary research is knowledge that is accessible to anyone who wants to look it up - it already exists and does not need to be created or discovered for the first time.

Examples of secondary research might be looking up reference material at the library or digging through a newspaper's morgue files or even reading magazine articles. Anybody else can come along and also look at those research sources. They don't "belong" to just you because you did not create them.