MKT5612 Chap.2 Secondary Data and Qualitative Inquiry
Secondary Data and Qualitative Inquiry
Secondary data already exist because they were collected for another purpose. They can define a market, reveal historical patterns and prevent unnecessary fieldwork, but only after a fit check covering relevance, accuracy, currency, units and coverage.
Internal records and external reports are useful for different questions, and neither becomes decision-ready simply because it is convenient.
Qualitative inquiry is suited to meanings, motives, language and process. Focus groups use participant interaction to surface shared or contested views; depth interviews protect privacy and allow a detailed personal account.
Sampling is purposive rather than statistical, moderation affects what emerges, and analysis depends on disciplined coding and comparison. Findings can explain possibilities and improve survey design, but small nonprobability samples do not support population percentages.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Internal and external secondary data
- 02
Relevance, accuracy, currency and coverage
- 03
Qualitative purposes and evidence limits
- 04
Focus-group interaction and moderation
- 05
Depth interviews and sensitive topics
- 06
Coding, saturation and survey handoff
Worked example · free
Choose a qualitative route for a travel app
- 3Audit what the existing behavioural data answer and leave unresolved.
- 4Select and justify a qualitative method.
- 3State a defensible handoff to later measurement.
Key terms
- Secondary Data
- Information previously collected for a purpose different from the current research decision.
- Data Fit
- The degree to which an existing source matches the current question, population, definitions, timing and required accuracy.
- Focus Group
- A moderated group discussion that uses interaction to explore perceptions, language and disagreement.
- Depth Interview
- A flexible one-to-one conversation designed to elicit detailed experiences, motives and interpretations.
- Purposive Sampling
- Selection of information-rich participants according to characteristics relevant to the research question.
- Saturation
- The practical point at which additional qualitative collection yields little substantively new insight for the defined inquiry.
Secondary Data and Qualitative Inquiry FAQ
Why not always collect new primary data?
Primary data cost time and money and may duplicate knowledge already available. A disciplined secondary-data review can narrow the question, establish benchmarks and expose coverage gaps, making any later collection more focused and defensible.
Do more focus-group participants make findings representative?
No. Adding participants to a purposive qualitative design can deepen thematic coverage, but it does not create a known selection probability. Representativeness depends on the sampling design, not on a large-looking attendance count.
How should qualitative findings shape a questionnaire?
They can reveal the vocabulary participants use, overlooked answer categories, sensitive wording and plausible relationships. Those insights should be converted into testable items and pretested; they should not be copied mechanically or treated as numerical prevalence estimates.
What makes a qualitative theme defensible?
A defensible theme is supported across relevant passages, preserves the context in which participants expressed it and accounts for meaningful exceptions. The report should show how coding decisions were made and connect the interpretation to a decision or later measurement step.
Exam move
Use a two-column audit for any existing source: what it resolves and what remains unknown. For qualitative cases, add three decisions beneath it: who can reveal the missing meaning, whether interaction helps or suppresses disclosure, and how the material will be analysed. Practise writing one limitation sentence that identifies the exact inference not permitted.
Strong answers connect the qualitative phase to a later instrument or test instead of ending with themes. Under time pressure, justify the method through disclosure conditions, participant interaction and the intended handoff. Create comparison cards for focus groups and depth interviews using four headings: social setting, evidence produced, moderator risk and next-stage output.
Apply both cards to the same sensitive and nonsensitive topic so the effect of interaction becomes visible. For analysis practice, take five short fictional comments, assign provisional codes, merge overlapping codes and write one negative case that challenges the theme. Then draft a survey item that follows from the revised interpretation.
This sequence prevents quotation collecting from being mistaken for analysis and reinforces that thematic recurrence is not a population percentage. End by naming the participant experience missing from the purposive sample.
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