research techniques-secondary research

1.1

Secondary research uses methods such as:

•books

•news archive

•photo libraries

•World Wide Web

•internet forums

•circulation figures



In secondary research books are used to get detailed information of the topic or issue that is needed. The disadvantages of books is that it can be time consuming also sometimes it can give you too much information when you are just looking for one specific thing. A very good example is that dictionaries has very limited resources whereas Google you type in the word and it gives the correction straight away by saying 'did you mean' or 'showing results for'.

 This is a print screen showing what Google does when you miss spell a word.

Another solution for this is to go on to an online dictionary.

News archives now in our days you can now use computers to scroll through and find the information that you need but sometimes you can’t look at computers you have to go to places like library's depending on the circumstances. News archives are now very time consuming and sometimes you can’t get the right information you need. An example is British newspaper archive.

 http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk - This is the link to The British Newspaper Archive.

This is a screen shot of The British Newspaper Archive.

The British Newspaper Archive shows you millions of newspaper archive. The down side to this is that you can’t have that one specific thing you need there is too much information and sometimes not the right the information you need.

Photo library are used to supply photographs for specific use. Photo library can be often time consuming and limited evidence is found. In the 21st century they now use digital online to find what you are looking for which people usually use.

This is a web search of online photo library.

World Wide Web (WWW) commonly known as the web consists of global public web sites using the protocol of HTTP. The disadvantages of the web are that some websites give you false information and also the information may be not what you specifically ask for. The advantages of the web are that you can find out information that you didn’t even know.

Internet Forums is an online discussion where people can post their comments on a specific topic or issue. The disadvantages of using internet forums are that people can give you false information or they can give you information that you don’t necessarily need.  The advantages of this are that you can get other people’s opinions and knowledge of the things they know about the issue or topic and compare to your own knowledge.



Circulation figures are mostly used for the use of the amount of newspaper and magazines sold but not all as some are distrubuted for free.

This shows the curculation figures of newspaper distrubuted from 2000 to 2013 in the UK (United Kingdom).