Primary and secondary research
Secondary research appraises the quality of original research studies, summarises the findings, and often makes recommendations for practice. However, secondary research is not always available, and searching for primary research such as randomised control trials may be required.
| Secondary research |
Primary research |
- Review, evaluate, and discuss other peoples' original research and findings
- The 'methods' or 'methodology' section describes how the authors searched databases and decided which studies to include in their review
- The 'results' and 'discussion' sections may include a table of the characteristics of the studies they included, and describe the themes of the studies.
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- Reports on the authors' own original research that they have conducted themselves
- The 'methods' or 'methodology' section describes how the research was carried out, such as recruitment of participants, experiments, tests, interviews, surveys, and other data collection.
- The 'results' or 'findings' section describes what the researchers found out, and may include statistics, graphs, or tables to show their data.
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| Secondary study-type examples |
Primary study-type examples |
- literature review
- systematic review
- meta-analysis (quantitative)
- meta-synthesis (qualitative)
- guidelines
- evidence-based care sheets
- expert opinions
- editorials
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- surveys
- interviews
- focus groups
- experiments
- randomised control trials
- cohort studies
- case studies
- qualitative studies
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Checklists
Use the following checklists to help decide if an article is primary or secondary research.
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In secondary research, you will probably see:
- The word 'review', 'meta-analysis', or 'meta-synthesis' in the title
- A description of how the researchers found articles e.g., search strategy, and databases searched
- A flow chart showing how the articles were chosen
- How many articles were reviewed
- A description of their characteristics or themes
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In primary research, you will probably see:
- Methodology section describing:
- the study participants, e.g., how many there were, and how they were chosen
- What tests, experiments, surveys, or interviews were done
- Results section:
- Charts or tables of the data found
- Quotes from participants
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