Data collection methods (3.3) and storage of collected data (3.4) GapFill

There are a number of different ways of collecting data. The data collection method that you use will depend on the type of data that you need, and how the data will be processed.

Primary data is data that you collect  yourselffrom statistical reportsfrom the Internetfrom books and magazines.

Let’s say that you are conducting a school report, or a business wants information from the public or its customers. You or they might send out a form with a series of questions about a chosen subject. This is  a consumer panela sensora loyalty schemea survey. You could send this form through the post, hand-deliver it, or send a link to an online form by  emailconsumer panelinterviewsensor. If you plan to contact only a few people, but want detailed, face-to-face feedback that allows questions to be clarified or adjusted in real time, you might use   a surveya loyalty schemea sensoran interview. 

 PrimaryIndependentReliableSecondary research is the name given to data that has already been collected by someone else. A good example of this type of data is sourced from  statistical reportsemailssensorssurveys because they contain pre-collected data and statistics (e.g. how demographics in an area have changed over time) that can be analysed to find patterns and used for a variety of purposes.

How you choose to store the data that you have collected is also important. If you store your data on your own  QR codephysical devicenetworkcloud, then you can keep sensitive data offline to prevent it from being stolen, but if you want to use this data on several different devices, you will have to find a way to transfer files between devices and keep copies of the files up to date.  Mobile deviceCloudBig dataPhysical device storage offers a way to store your data on an organisation's servers and access the data online, so that it can be accessed from any networked device and does not require you to invest in your own hardware infrastructure. However, this means that your data is only as  serverscrackedsecurehacked as the organisation holding it, and if you or the organisation holding your data were to lose network connection, your data would become entirely unavailable.

With  serversmobile devicesdesktop computersbarcode readers, which are able to collect a variety of data, being constantly carried around and used by a large proportion of the population, data has become much more readily available.