Types Of Research Data

If you are conducting research studies, you must understand the many types of research data. You see, researching involves many different factors. You must be able to understand everything that is related to your research too and this is why you must be able to make sure that you know each of the types of research data and understand them well too.

Primary data. The primary data are the types of research data that come first hand. They are the data and information that we collect on our own. They are the types of research data that come up during our research period too. This means that these include interviews, observations, and the like. In other words, these types of research data will be the foundation of our research study. This is how important primary data is.

Secondary Data. Secondary data types of research data, on the other hand, are data and information that has already been confirmed, concluded and published. They are the ones that we can use so we can gain knowledge too. These are the types of research data that are used as evidence in different kinds of research studies as well. This is because of the fact that they are already solid data that have been proven by other people or sources.

Ordinal Data. As the name implies, ordinal data are types of research data that researchers can arrange in ordinal form. A good example of these types of research data would be the rankings of teams in a basketball league. You see, the teams with more wins will get to have better and higher rankings.

Discrete Data. Discrete data are types of research data that are fixed. They are ones that cannot be broken down as well. They are data that are gotten directly from respondents. They can be whole numbers too. Discrete data would be the answer to yes or no questions.

Nominal Data. Nominal data are types of data that are assigned nominal values. Most of the time, these are used to compute. Remember that there are also times when the nominal values will not have significance but to separate one data from the other.

Ratio Data. Ration Data are data that are used in research studies to show the rational relationships that are needed in the research. They are used to scale the different units of measurements too.

Continuous Data. As the name implies, these are the data types that pertain to continuity. Most of the time, these are the data that uses decimal values to show the continuity relationships. Continuous data are the ones that are very important to research studies wherein time is an important factor. This being said, the data that are given will be ranked as they should be.

Researching will pertain to different kinds of methods and strategies used to come up with answers and conclusions. This is why it is very important that each and every researcher will have a good amount of knowledge about the data types that they can make good use of to get the most accurate results.