Research Methodology

chapter 3

DATA COLLECTION

Objectives:

After completing this chapter, you can understand the following:

• The definition of primary and secondary data
• The sources primary and secondary data
• Various methods of data collection
• The definition of data processing
• Different classifications of data

Oxford dictionary defines data as “facts, figures and statistics collected together for analysis”. For most of the real-time projects, these facts and figures are unorganized and unprocessed. Consider a sentence, “the price of crude oil is $180 per barrel”. Can any specific information be gained from this sentence? Is it current price of the crude oil in India? Such questions cannot be answered from these data fragments. So, data can be a number, ...