What is Secondary Use Research? (Part 2 of 2)

 Research projects that would fall under secondary use are those which utilize previously-collected data to answer a new research question. Before the research can begin, the Research Ethics Board (REB) will need to review your proposed research.

Using old data to answer new questions has a number of advantages, such as not wasting resources (e.g., time) re-collecting information. Additionally, for some new researchers, this approach can seem less daunting than undertaking a standard research project involving collecting new data. What types of research questions lend themselves to this type of data? Here are some examples:

Many scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) questions can be answered using secondary data (i.e., using student performance data form the previous semesters you have taught). For example, you may be wondering if your students prefer your class taught hybrid, face-to-face or online. If you have taught the same course in all three delivery modes, you may be able to answer that question (though you’d have to consider a selection bias where different types of students may prefer and/or register for different delivery modes, but I’m just trying to provide a simple example to illustrate SoTL using secondary data). Another SoTL question you might have about your own courses is whether your students learned more when you taught your course a certain way (e.g., flipped classroom, project-based learning, etc).

Another example might be using data you previously collected for a different purpose, such as quality assurance. This could be in your own classroom (e.g., a start-stop-continue or data from the SFQs) or a survey distributed to students after a program orientation. These data were collected for other purposes originally, but might be able to help you to answer a research question now, as secondary data.

Administrative data are another example, such as retention data, student GPA, etc. Although you may not have access to these, it is possible to gain access with the right permissions and a valuable research question.

I hope these examples have given you some ideas of how you might harness previous data to answer some research question(s). To summarize, any previously-collected data that is being re-purposed for research (or for a new research question) would be considered a secondary use project. SoTL, quality assurance, and administrative research questions lend themselves particularly well to this approach.

If there is anything I can do to support your research or if you have suggestions for me in my role as Research Coordinator, please reach out via email or pop in to my “office hours” on Fridays from 12:30-1:30pm on Whereby.