Primary Research

Primary research is first-hand information collected for a specific purpose. It is not simply research done first; it comes directly from the target audience or an original source, such as the people who use a product or the person who witnessed an event.

Because the organisation designs the questions and records the answers itself, the information is current and fits the exact question being answered. The organisation also owns the results, so competitors cannot simply use the same findings. Since you know how the information was collected, primary research can be more reliable than data whose origins are unclear, provided the method is sound.

Strengths and drawbacks

• It can give fresh, relevant evidence about a particular audience or idea.
• It takes time to plan the collection, gather responses and analyse them.
• It can cost more to carry out, for example when paying for venues, printing or incentives.
• A small sample may not represent the whole audience, so the results can be misleading.
• Poorly worded questions produce poor results, because people may misunderstand what is being asked or give unusable answers.

For example, a games studio might ask its own players how clear a new tutorial is. If it only asks twelve players, their answers may not match the views of thousands of other players, so the small sample limits how far the findings can be trusted.

Primary data is data collected first-hand by the researcher. In the games example, the players' answers are primary data because the studio collected them directly for its own purpose.