Primary Data is Original data

Primary Data is Original data, this means that it has been collected by you, someone who has volunteered to assist you in your research, or by someone who is within your employ to gather this research, this does not include comparing results with your peers to help evaluate the accuracy of your own results, as this type of data has not been gathered by you, or have you had any part in the gathering of this information. There are a few ways in which primary data can be obtained, which includes surveys, interviews, a focus group or by an experiment.
Primary data is most useful for the fact that it has been you and/or your research team that has gathered the data, therefore if all the necessary calculations and variables have been correctly considered and worked out then the primary research should be more accurate than secondary data, it takes away the possibility of any form of “Chinese whispers” effect of the information being altered as it is passes from one source to the next.
As well as being more accurate, primary data is specific to whichever field of research you are pursuing, so for example, whenever I was researching the experiment that I performed in this assignment, I found many links to websites containing osmosis experiments, but I found very little information on osmosis experiments being performed using a salt solution, but found an abundance of sources showing osmosis experiments being performed using a sugar solution, this data may prove to be helpful in solidifying the reliability of my own results, but they are next to useless if they are being used to try and accurately display what had happened during the experiment.
Primary data sources can be quite costly, as funding will almost certainly be required to some degree, whether large or small, as with this experiment, a bag of potatoes needed to be purchased. On a larger scale, more expensive equipment will be required. Generally staff will need to be employed to assist with the research which