Cvent Survey

We spend a lot of time talking about why an organization needs to survey, but in all our talk about good survey design we often overlook an important step in your project: secondary data. Secondary data, or data previously collected, can be internal to the organization—from accounting, sales, customer service, marketing, etc.

Secondary data can also be external. Commonly used external data comes from published sources, for example, commercially available data or government census data.

Using secondary data can save both time and money, but it's important to make sure that the secondary data meets certain criteria in order to be applicable to your project. Ask yourself:

• Is the data current? Does it apply to the time frame you're interested in?
• Is the data useful to your survey research?
• Can the data be verified? Is it dependable and accurate?
• What bias is present in the data?
• What were the methodologies used to collect the data? Was the response rate high? Was the sample size large enough? Was the questionnaire design good?

Keep in mind that secondary data is rarely sufficient and often needs to be supplemented with additional data collection. Still, as we're continually asked to do more with less time and resources, utilizing past data can save you and your respondents time in survey response collection.