What are the major types of secondary analysis?

What will be an ideal response?


There are several ways to classify the types of secondary analysis. When considering the number of databases used, secondary analysis may be classified as a cross-sectional study or a longitudinal study. Cross-sectional studies capture one moment in time. Exploratory and descriptive studies are often cross-sectional. Longitudinal studies are designed to allow for observations over an extended period of time, and include trend studies, cohort studies, and panel studies. Trend studies investigate changes within a general population over time, cohort studies examine specific subpopulations over time, and panel studies are similar to trend or cohort studies, but investigate the same set of people each time.

Secondary analysis can also be classified by the sources of data. Research-oriented secondary data include all data sets collected by others for research rather than other purposes. Nonresearch-oriented secondary data include publicly available documents, official records, private documents and records, media, and physical nonverbal materials. The fundamental difference between research-oriented and nonresearch-oriented secondary data has to do with quality in terms of both data collection and documentation. Research-oriented data sets are generally collected according to strict procedures of sampling and measurement, while nonresearch-oriented data sets are comparatively less strict on both accounts.

Another way to classify the types of secondary analysis is by method. Content analysis is a research method appropriate for studying human communication and aspects of social behavior, and is typically used with archival records. The basic goal is to take a verbal, nonquantitative document and transform it into quantitative data. The units of analysis include words, paragraphs, books, pictures, advertisements, and television episodes, and contents can be manifest or latent. A second method is analyzing published statistics, which are aggregate information that cannot be traced to the individual level from which the aggregation is made. The unit of analysis is an aggregate element, such as a county, region, state, country, or city. The third method is historical analysis, which involves attempts to reconstruct past events and the use of historical evidence to generate and test theories. The basic evidence primarily consists of authentic documents, such as testimony and organizational records.

Health Professions

You might also like to view...

What reference must a coder always use to correctly build a code?

A) the Index B) the Table C) the Appendix D) the cross-reference

Health Professions

The term blanching, used to describe localized cold injury, means the tissue has turned to which of the following colors?

A) White or lighter B) Black C) Blue or purple D) Red

Health Professions

By what age do most of the pulmonary function indices reach their maximum levels?

A. 20-25 years B. 40-45 years C. 12-18 years D. 4-8 years

Health Professions

When assessing a pregnant woman it is important to remember that:

a. the uterus will be expanded and may be as high as the diaphragm. b. systolic and diastolic blood pressures are normally high in the third trimester. c. due to physiologic changes in pregnancy, women may lose only 15 percent of their blood volume before they go into shock. d. maternal heart rate is usually normal in the third trimester.

Health Professions