The big idea: The guide names four secondary sources: internet-based research, government data and statistics, university research and a literature search.
They are used to support or validate primary research — to set the numbers you cannot measure and to check whether what you found is normal.
Each source with its strength and its risk, then the four questions to ask of anything before you use it.
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| Source | On the bedside table project | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| Internet research | Competitor tables, their dimensions, prices and claimed features | Manufacturer sites are selling; forum posts are one person |
| Government data | Hospital infection statistics, and the cleaning regulations a ward must meet | Written for policy, so rarely about your exact question |
| University research | Published anthropometric reach data for seated and bed-bound adults | A narrow population, and sometimes decades old |
| Literature search | Case studies of ward refurbishments, and existing design guidelines | Opinion and evidence sit side by side on the page |
Where secondary research beats primary: You cannot measure the reach of a thousand bed-bound adults, and you must not guess a cleaning regulation.
For population data, standards and anything with a legal consequence, published work is better than anything you could collect — and cheaper.
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Four questions to ask of any source
Who wrote it, and what do they gain?
A manufacturer's page about its own table is evidence of what they claim, not of what it does.
When was it produced?
Anthropometric data ages as populations change, and a regulation may have been replaced since.
Where did the numbers come from?
How many people, from where, measured how? A figure with no method behind it cannot be defended if challenged.
Who checked it before publication?
University research is reviewed by other researchers. A blog is reviewed by nobody. Both can be useful; only one can be leaned on.
Collected is not the same as used: A folder of screenshots is not secondary research. Each source has to be cited, and it has to change something.
Say what you took from it and where that appears — a specification number, a constraint, a discarded idea. A source with no consequence was decoration.
How this is tested — analysing secondary sources and using them to support primary findings. It comes up two ways:
Paper 1 — multiple choice
- Classify a named source as primary or secondary.
- Identify the weakness of a stated secondary source.
Paper 2 — analysing a product
- Analyse secondary sources for a named product and say what each contributes.
- Explain how secondary research validates a primary finding.
The trap: Listing sources without judging them. The mark is for what a source contributes AND what its limitation is, because an unjudged source cannot be defended when an examiner asks how you know.
A team has observed twelve patients struggling to reach items on a bedside table. Analyse how secondary research could support and validate this finding.
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