Desk Research

At OnePoll, our specialism lies very much in primary research, but we also have experience with secondary research (also known as desk research) and analysis.

We can take existing data, collected at a previous point in time to conduct new analysis without directly asking people new questions. This can either be:

  • Internal data – where we can use a clients own data (perhaps sales records, customer database information, previous research reports) to conduct further analysis
  • External data – Using publicly available information from another database, for example government or industry reports. A lot of information can be found online about the British public thanks to the ONS among other bodies.

We can use MSExcel, along with our chosen analytics software (Q) to perform extra analysis on datasets to provide insight. Desk research can be done either standalone; either to gather information before proceeding with a larger study, or as a research piece of itself. Or this can form part of a methodology, combining secondary research with primary to deliver deep and meaningful data to fuel the story you need to tell.

When conducting secondary research, it’s important to consider:

  • Is the information relevant – Does it actually give you what you need to come to a credible conclusion?
  • Is the information in date – Particularly for anything financial or political, secondary data sources need to be recent enough to be of use.
  • What is the source of the data – can it be trusted? Are there any possible biases depending on who conducted the initial research?
  • Do the definitions match your own – If you want to conduct secondary data analysis to find out about the behaviour of pensioners, a dataset which includes teenagers is not going to be of help.

When using data from a client dataset, it is important that these customers have agreed for their data to be processed in such a way. In this case as well, it is just as important to have strict data controls in place to protect customers, the same as if we were conducting primary research.

Here is an example of desk research OnePoll conducted with OpenTable and W Communications Dining Standards Index – OpenTable and W Communications – OnePoll