Secondary Data Collection: Methodology, Philosophy, Design, And Approach

Advantages of secondary data collection method in research

The research work has followed the secondary data collection method to pursue the objectives of the paper. The secondary data such as the literary work that is relevant to the subject and can assist in achieving the objective of the past along with the dynamic data that represents the stats and facts of the green construction industry and migrants have been taken into account to collect the data (Ling, Dulaimi & Chua, 2012). The reason for not selecting the primary data collection method lays on the fact that it will limit the size of data collected while collecting data from the secondary source, the research work can be done by taking global context due to the large size of data. The philosophy of the paper is the interpretivism philosophy which considers both the social and the scientific aspect of the data relevant to a particular source (Da veiga, 2016). The approach is deductive because the paper has attempted at evaluating the core challenges offered by the migrants (Indians) in the green construction industry (Schmitz et al., 2015). The design of the research work is the meta-analysis design while the sampling has been selected as the likelihood sampling method will be used (Palinkas et al., 2015).

The reason for selecting the secondary data collection method lays its basis on two facts the first being it is time, effort and cost efficient. The discussed data collection is capable of readily gathering data because of the introduction of cyber techniques and internet. Additionally, the internet can assist in collecting the needed data at a very low or zero cost while the effort is also minimal (Steelman, Hammer & Limayem, 2014). Cao et al., 2015, adopted the same secondary data collection method to measure the effectiveness of BIM (Business information modelling) in construction projects.

The second and probably the most foremost reason for selecting the secondary method is to gain an insight in the research work and enhance the domain of data collection. The author of the research work may find difficulty in collecting primary data at a large geographical domain or global data while, the case is case of secondary data is alternative because in this case the author can collect global data (Choy, 2014). Collection of global data will assist the author to conclude their research work at a global perspective and not limited to a particular country and hence, the selection.

Positivist research philosophy adopted

The paper has discussed the research philosophy, design and approach however, what are the significance of including the deemed sections in the research report. The reason for attaching the discussed sections in the report lays on the fact that these sections enable the readers to understand the perception of the author and why had they opted to research on the topic. The discussion of the methodology will enable the readers to understand the mind-set of the author for the discussed report and hence, is part of the research paper.

One of the core components that derive the research and even influences the perception of the reader is the research philosophy (Hughes & Sharrock, 2016). There are commonly two types of the research philosophy, namely; interpretivism and positivism (Saunders et al, 2015). The scholars who pursue the interpretivism philosophy are derived by the motive of deriving on a conclusion. According to the interpretivism, humans are not robotic in nature who would react or whose decisions are based on the just stats instead it takes consideration of their consciousness. It states that different individual will have a different reaction to a typical scenario and hence, they and their perception need to be evaluated individually rather than based on a common pattern (Hughes & Sharrock, 2016). Hence, the deemed philosophy prefers the qualitative data such as interviews over the quantitative data type. The deemed philosophy takes consideration of the non-scientific methods to collect data and reach a conclusion.

On the contrary, the followers of the positivist theory believe that the social facts and norms shape the actions or perception of the individuals. The main focus of the scholars who pursue the deemed research philosophy believes that the evaluation of the social norms can be summarised to evaluate the action and perception of an individual (Da veiga, 2016). The preference of the scholars here is to keep themselves detached from the respondents and hence, they prefer the secondary data collection method. Hence based on the discussion above, the selection of the positivism philosophy has been made.

Deductive and inductive is the most commonly equipped research approach for research work. A deductive approach follows the pattern of T-H-O-C which stands for theory-hypothesis-observation-confirmation (Singh, 2015). In the discussed research approach, the focus starts from devising a theory followed by making hypothesis which is then observed for validity before confirming it. The deductive approach is of great assistance for the research works that are done to evaluate a particular scenario. On the contrary, the inductive approach follows the O-P-H-T approach, and it stands for observation, pattern, hypothesis and confirmation (Schmitz et al., 2015). In the discussed scenario, the observation is done before deducing or discovering the pattern and regularities. Following the identification of the pattern, the tentative hypothesis is made before reaching the final step that is the confirmation step. The deemed approach is significantly beneficial for the research work where a theory or model or similar other things are induced (Johnston, 2014). The need of the paper suggested that in the research work, the author has to identify the challenges that are associated with educating Indian migrants in green construction and hence, the selection of the deductive approach has been done because it suits the objective of the research.

Deductive approach used for analysis

Prime means of data collection are primary and secondary means of data collection (Lewis, 2015). The primary data collection method refers to the data that had been collected by the author of research work to pursue the research objectives. In this mode, the researcher collects data by means of interviews, surveys, experiments and others. While secondary means refers to the data collection method refers to the data collection method where the author of a paper collects data by secondary means that is from the literary works that had been assessed in the past by other scholars. In the talked-about mode the author who is conducting research paper reviews literary works, newspapers and other reliable mediums to collect the data and pursue their research objective (Hewson & Stewart, 2016). The primary data collection method offers the advantage of real-time data collection while the latter saves time, cost and extra effort put in data collection. However, it is also notable that though the data collected from the primary means are crude in form but are more reliable than the secondary data which are refined but are relatively less accurate and reliable.

Both the primary and secondary data collection method can be further divided into primary and secondary data collection method. The categories are qualitative and quantitative data collection method where the former is an exploratory data while the latter offers more of statistical data (Spence, Lachlan & Rainear, 2016). The qualitative data that are collected through interviews, group discussions, observation/participation assists in gaining insight into the perception of the participants about the problems and their potential solutions (Sutton & Austin, 2015). The discussed measures will assist in earning an in-depth knowledge of the subject which can be further converted in a trend or pattern. It is also notable that the deemed data collection is unstructured and smaller in size, however, are rich by nature and offers more accuracy and reliability than the latter. In contradiction, the latter considers a large size of data and instead of defining new patterns is focused on evaluating pre-defined variables (Cleary, Horsfall & Hayter, 2014). Unlike, the previous it offers statistical data which needs to analysed with the assistance of some statistical tools to derive the findings. The deemed method equips measurable data to uncover patterns and formulate facts while offering more structured data. The data for the deemed scenario is obtained through surveys, online polls, website interceptors and others.

Meta-analysis design and likelihood sampling method used

The proposed paper has adopted secondary data collection method for the collection of the data. The source for collecting the secondary data will be the literary work of past such as published data (government publications, international entities), committee & commission reports, newspaper & media, research scholars and others that has been assessed on the topic relevant to the proposed topic. The paper will analyse at least 7 sources to collect the necessary data from global resources to collect a generalised data. The keywords that will be used for the collecting the data are Indian migrants & their attitude, green construction industry challenges, educating workforce in green tools & techniques and similar others. To determine the attitude of the Indian migrants a comparative analysis with other migrants such as Chinese, Indonesian and others will be done. The paper will analyse the collected data using statistical tool MS-Excel and critical thinking.

The reason for adding sampling in the methodology is because the collected articles are relevant to the topic but are not researched on the same topic. Hence, to concuss the findings to be used as data for the proposed objective, the sampling of the data will be done. Sampling of data refers to concussing of the collected data to determining the findings from the enormous amount of collected data (Palinkas et al., 2015). Doing so enables the researchers to save resources (capital, time) while reducing the workload. The results from sampling also offer a generalised result which is accurate for general. The three factors that are taken into consideration is the sampling procedure, size and respondents. Commonly, two general types of data sampling method are followed by the researchers the first being likelihood method where all the responses from the respondents are given the same status and evaluated while the second is non-likelihood method where the responses from the participants are not given same priority and are sample according to the relevancy. The sampling of the surveys, polls and data collected from similar means follow the likelihood sampling method while the data collected from interviews and other similar means are sampled through non-likelihood method. The deemed paper has taken consideration of both the sampling method for the sampling of data. The table following will cite the sources for data collection, keywords and the description over why the source have been selected.

The table following have cited the sources of secondary data collection along with the keywords that were used to search for the literary work. Aligned with the data and source, description of each of the source has been done to cite the role of the source in the proposed research work.

Keywords used in data collection

Table 1: Table of Source

(Source: Created by Author)

The internet in the deemed scenario acted as a tool for data collection from where different journals, articles, government publications, data from trusted websites and other secondary means. The most prominent source of facts and figures were the news articles which assisted in gathering the comparative data among Indian & Australia. The MS office tools were used to store and analyse the data obtained. The MS word and MS EXCEL were used to store data. The theoretical data were stored in MS word while the factual data & figures were stored using the MS Excel. MS Excel also assisted in simplifying the complexed data such as the attitude of the Indians. Finally, MS Visio was adopted to propose the 6E model.

  The research has will have its significance however, it also has its limitations. The first and foremost difficulty that the author faced in pursuing the research objectives is the limitation of enough money which lead to accessing limited resources. The paper has pursued secondary data collection method which prohibited the author to research all the scholarly article available or relevant to the subject of the paper because some of the literature work on the subject are paid versions and could not be accesses. It possesses the capability to disrupt the flow of the research work and could even act as a barrier to earning the desired or most appropriate outcome.

The paper even faced constraints in collecting data because several researched have been conducted on the migrants in the construction industry however, there was a huge gap in literature when considered with Indian migrants which lead to limited collection of data. The weakness of the paper can be considered its secondary data collection method. The reason for stating the above mentioned fact is that the research work is associated with the human factors and equipping primary methods would have cited more strong findings relevant to the subject.

The paper will offer the direction for further research in the discussed subject. The aspired scholars can pursue the same objective as that of the discussed research work by equipping primary data collection method and compare the results to determine a generalised opinion over the challenges offered by Indian migrants in green construction industry.

Scope:

The deemed research will even offer scope for the researchers that wishes to research on the factors associated with Indian migrants in the construction industry or even green construction industry. The paper will also provide platform for further researches in the area of educating workers in the construction industry.

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Palinkas, L. A., Horwitz, S. M., Green, C. A., Wisdom, J. P., Duan, N., & Hoagwood, K. (2015). Purposeful sampling for qualitative data collection and analysis in mixed method implementation research. Administration and Policy in Mental Health and Mental Health Services Research, 42(5), 533-544.

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Schmitz, B., Klemke, R., Walhout, J., & Specht, M. (2015). Attuning a mobile simulation game for school children using a design-based research approach. Computers & Education, 81, 35-48.

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Steelman, Z. R., Hammer, B. I., & Limayem, M. (2014). Data collection in the digital age: Innovative alternatives to student samples. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 23(2), 212-219.

Sutton, J., & Austin, Z. (2015). Qualitative research: data collection, analysis, and management. The Canadian journal of hospital pharmacy, 68(3), 226.

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