Types of data and research in a dissertation

A dissertation means conducting a research project and completing it perfectly without any mistakes. A student can feel disgusting at certain points while making a report on their research. It is mainly possible for the students who are about to gain their post-graduate degree or undergraduate degree. The outlook of their research methodology always begins with primary research. So, sometimes the primary research can be a reason for their stress while writing a dissertation.

If you are about to write a dissertation, you have to conduct perfect research. If you are about to conduct research, you have to go through the primary investigation of your topic, subject, and objective. You might feel disgusted and devastated while doing the primary investigation. It is the first stage and you become confused about where to start and how to begin doing it.

We are here to provide you with the definitive and crucial directed way. So, we will come up with a lot of useful information that can prove beneficial for your primary research and ultimately, your perfect dissertation.

Make sure to know about the kind and sort of the data you want to work on

So, this is the first step of your primary research. The first thing you have to do is to know. Of course, if you don’t know anything, what are you going to think about? You must make sure to yourself that you know about the kind of data that you and your research study will use. There are some categories in which the data is categorized:

• Primary Data
• Secondary Data
• Big Data

If you are going to conduct your basic and first research, which can be called primary research, you will have to focus on the primary data. It can be explained. If you are in middle school and you are asked to write an essay, you will write the essay of your standard and about your grade. You will never try to connect the essay lines of the college level as it will not be beneficial for you in any case. It is the same in the case of data. If you are on your primary research, you will use primary data. In any case, you will not find it attractive to use secondary data and big data in your primary research.
At this point, you will be confused about the categories of data. So, first, clear them out.

Primary Data

It is the data that you collect by yourself. It can be considered as the basic step as you are directly involved in collecting the data of this type. A student conducting research investigates everything in his or her approach and writes the notes as data. He/She doesn’t use any other person for this reason and write their ideas in this case. So, it is called the primary data as you are the one helping your self in conducting and carrying out the research for your dissertation.

If you are doing the primary research for writing a dissertation for your undergraduate or postgraduate, you are much more likely to depend on this type of data than any other type, no matter how effective they are. For the primary data, you will use all types of means in your approach to making it in the best way you can. In the dictionaries of many students who have their postgraduate and undergraduate degrees by writing a good dissertation, the primary data is also called the real-time data. It more possibly means that you collect the primary data not only when conducting the primary research but also at the time of the research project. The primary data is completely under the name of the researcher and the researcher can directly control it and edit it.

Secondary Data

It is the second-hand data that comes to you by indirect means. The secondary data is collected and organized by some other person who researched the specific topic in the past. The person in the past will record his data as secondary data for others and primary data for the person itself. The secondary data is open to the public in some cases. In other cases, the secondary data has to be accessed to have its use. Mainly, the secondary data is accessible with the help of past researchers, government sources, and different online and offline reports. You can also declare this type of data as the “past data”. It is because it was collected in the past. Secondary data can be easier to have as you won’t have to do anything difficult or challenging for gaining this type of data. It will be an easy choice to have secondary data. But, you will have to realize the fact that the secondary data is not always 100% related to your project or in some cases, your ideas. You are not always assured what the person in the past thought while researching the topic. So, it can be a different one although it can be related to your topic. In addition to that, you will have to know that there might be some questions and objections over the accuracy and the correct form of the secondary data. Usually, the old secondary data that comes to us is edited at various times and places.

Big Data

Before knowing about big data, you have to know that you are never going to choose this type of data for your research. We cannot declare big data as a source for your research project. It is the most complex and complicated type of data collection. Mostly and always, big data has never been in the use of postgraduate and undergraduate students. You can categorize the big data in three ways:
High Volume of Data

Wide Variety of the Type of Data
High Velocity with which the Data is processed
It is mainly because of the complication of big data that the processing procedures of the standard data do not apply this data in the studies of students. Moreover, the students who want to perform on big data will have to through hardcore training for the sake of learning how to process the big data for their studies.

Make your mind on the Methodology you will use in your primary research

A methodology means the way and the line of attack of anything that is related and is specific for any of your purposes. There are several methodologies that you will be able to use for your primary research. These methods will include:

• Qualitative Method
• Quantitative Method
• Mixed Method

If you want to stick to one of these methods, you will have to know about the meaning and the use of these methods:

Qualitative Research

Qualitative means “related to quality”. It is the research that is conducted based on the quality of different things around you in your daily life. In other words, it is the exploration of nature in terms of quality. If you are going to investigate and travel around for the first time for the sake of research, you will be able to discover many new things if you choose qualitative research. This type of research is often used by the students when they don’t want the tension and confusion of going through the numbers and quantities as in quantitative research. Qualitative research varies from one person to the other as the aesthetic preference of every human is different from each other altogether. So, in qualitative research, you will have to use your ideas and thoughts on a certain thing, place, or person. If you want to conduct qualitative research that can apply to all the persons in the world irrespective of their thoughts and preferences, you will have to realize and reflect on a dynamic reality. Make sure that it is not fixed to a certain type of person. You can easily know about the perspectives of the people by observing and interviewing them. In this way, you can understand the meaning of their thoughts and ideas about a certain reality.

Quantitative Research

It is the type of research that is positive and confirmed by all the respects of human thoughts and also, by nature. It is related to the number of things. You have to depend on the arithmetical psychiatrists as your main goal and aim is to verify and reject different hypotheses. Because of its relation to the numbers in the living and non-living world, quantitative research will make you concerned about the quantity of a certain thing. The quantitative research reflects a fixed reality. The reality is usually measurable. While conducting quantitative research, you will not be concerned about the elusive nature of anything that is measured by quality. It is a real truth that qualitative research is more accurate and dependable than the qualitative one.

Mixed Research

As the name shows, mixed research combines both qualitative and quantitative research. It uses both of the methods for conducting research. If you are following a single and a specific methodology, it is possible for you to have different answers and results and you can have some negative points too. But, in mixed research, as you are related to both of the two different methodologies, you will not have to worry about the different results in different cases. The main goal of the people who conduct mixed research is to gain more understanding and knowledge on the given topic.