Advantage disadvantage of secondary Data? - Answers

Advantages to the secondary data collection method are - 1) it saves time that would otherwise be spent collecting data, 2) provides a larger database (usually) than what would be possible to collect on ones own However there are disadvantages to the fact that the researcher cannot personally check the data so it's reliability may be questioned. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_data The link above is primarily on the use of secondary data for purposes of calculating statistics. In this electronic age, secondary data is disseminated very rapidly, such as credit card or employment history. You may want to browse the internet about problems when personal secondary data is widely available.