A user researcher's guide to secondary research

Desk research in 5 simple steps

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

What is secondary research?

Primary research is what most people think when they think of research. It refers to gathering data directly. In user research, this usually happens through user interviews, surveys, or usability tests. Secondary research  — also known as desk research —  involves using existing data to answer a research question.

The main purpose of secondary research is to collect data and insights in order to deepen our understanding of the problem space. It can also help us check whether the research question we are asking has already been investigated. The data used for secondary research can be qualitative or quantitative and include everything from previous internal research and company reports to white papers and academic research.

Secondary research tends to be misunderstood outside academia. People often associate it with a quick googling but the truth is far from it! If done correctly (in a systematic manner) it allows us to refine our research question, understand the problem, and identify the questions we should be asking. Of course, talking and testing users should be our priority in UX but there are times when taking time to conduct desk research can guide our understanding of the problem space and our users. Consider desk research as a valid starting point of a research process, simply to avoid reinventing the wheel and to stand on the shoulders of giants when you start your primary research. Spending a few hours doing secondary research can save us days of unnecessary primary research. It’s also suitable for researchers working in companies with smaller budgets and not many users.

How to conduct secondary research?

Coming from an academic background secondary research is one of my favourite parts of UX research and it’s how I start most of my projects. In academic research, all studies start with a literature review; a literature review is a search and evaluation of the available literature in a given subject or topic area. In this stage, researchers document the state of the art in the field or area they are researching and their findings shape the research question and their hypothesis/es. The same principle can be applied to UX and design research. Here are the main steps in this process:

1. Define the research question/topic: Like in secondary research, we always start with a research question or a subject. In this stage, we have to define what type of information we are looking for and consider why you are doing research and what we are planning to do with our findings. For example, we can use the findings to help us create personas or to guide our hypotheses for secondary research.

2. Identify potential sources: This depends on the time and the resources available to us at the time. Make a list of all the potential resources you can use. One could start with a review article on a topic related to our research question, a keyword search in Google Scholar, or by looking at previous research conducted in our company. For example, maybe a researcher who has now left the company did a similar study or a colleague from a different department collected data on a similar topic. Think through all the different resources you can use.

3. Evaluate the reliability of sources: This step is essential to ensure we use reliable information in our research. We need to carefully evaluate the reliability of each potential source in our list and prioritize it. In general, academic papers are peer-reviewed, which makes them more reliable than most alternative sources. However, academic research isn’t always available. When evaluating for reliability you can use certain checklists to make the process easier. It’s also worth setting a deadline and a limit of sources you can use for yourself depending on the nature of the project you’re working on. You’ll never be able to go through every single source and that’s fine.

4. Conduct the search: Finally! The time to do the actual search has come! Make sure to use your list. Go through the items and explore potentially interesting information in more detail. Also, have a look at the sources used in the articles. When looking for academic articles, review papers are ideal for this as they provide you with many more relevant sources. Make sure you keep track of all the resources you’re using. There are many ways to do this but I find that a reference manager or a good old excel spreadsheet works well for this.

5. Create a report/summary: Once you feel like you have collected enough information, it’s time to start synthesizing and create a report or summary. This is similar to the reports for primary research. You can share this with your team with suggestions for primary research. Sometimes, you might find that secondary research answers your question but most of the time some validation will be needed.