Urban Green Areas – their functions under a changing lifestyle of ...

Figure 1.8: Sources of data Source: STEINGRUBE (2011: 1/6)
Secondary data are existing information collections; these are provided by any kind of
facility, for instance governmental agencies and non-governmental organizations,
factories, scientific research institutions, statistical offices and the media, including
television and the Internet; the data are presented in the form of papers, scripts, reports
and summaries often tabulated; for secondary analysis you need to select and process
the information with regard to your own needs; this is the most common way of
scientific work and the most effective because it reduces efforts and saves time and
money;
Primary data are those you gather empirically for the purpose of your specific task;
appropriately selected composition of data by the investigator makes them unique; it is
also a very valuable material; acquisition of data related to field work and use one or
multiple sociological methods; this way is clearly focusing on the specific needs of the
task, but is also much more expensive, time consuming and causes higher costs than
the secondary analysis.
Regarding the absorption of existing knowledge there is often a barrier: the language. For
this thesis I had to restrict the information collection to English, German and Vietnamese
sources.
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