desk review methodology pdf

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• Module 2: Desk review

Discrete desk review of data quality

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The desk review is an evaluation of data quality dimensions of completeness, internal consistency, external comparisons and external consistency of population data. Normally, the desk review requires monthly or quarterly data by sub-national administrative area for the most recent reporting year, and annual aggregated data for the last three reporting years for the selected indicators.

District data quality assurance: a training package for monthly use of DHIS2 data quality dashboards at district and health facility levels

This training package aims to improve the quality of RHIS data through building capacity in the regular use of DHIS 2-based data quality tools at district level. Two approaches are presented:

• the DHIS2 version of the WHO Data Quality Tool;
• specially-configured data quality dashboards that are visible when users log into the DHIS2 website. 

The package includes set of tutorials and an exercise book that can be used in workshops or for self-learning. 

Data quality assurance: module 2: discrete desk review of data quality

Tools:  

Excel tool 

         Installation and User Guide           Analysis Guidance

Presentations on Module 2: Desk Review

District Data Quality Assurance Training  Package

For full materials of Desk Review training, contact  [email protected]

Child Rights Resource centre

Study: Research

Desk Review Template and Guidance

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CPWG, The Child Protection Working Group

CPWG members are committed to providing and supporting effective, well-coordinated child protection responses based on a robust and timely assessment of needs and capacities. CPWG members have therefore collaborated in developing the Child Protection Rapid Assessment (CPRA) Toolkit. As of May 2013, it has been used in multiple emergency-affected contexts and incorporates changes based on extensive field-testing. The CPRA guidance strongly suggests that undertaking a desk review (DR) is key to an effective rapid assessment. The evidence from the field also suggests that in places where a desk review was conducted prior to or as part of the CPRA, it facilitated the assessment process, especially the contextualization of the tools.

This tool has been developed by the Child Protection Working Group as a guide and generic template for development of a desk review. It provides an outline of what a DR would look like. It provides explanations and examples under each heading.

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Introduction to Desk Reviews

Module 1 objectives.

Module Objective : Provide an overview of the desk review purpose and process.

By the end of the module, the learner will have achieved the following learning objectives:

Learning Objective 1 : Learner will be able to explain the purpose of a desk review.

Learning Objective 2 : Learner will be able to distinguish between a desk review and other secondary research approaches.

Learning Objective 3 : Learner will be able to define different types of desk research.

What is a Desk Review?

A desk review is a form of secondary research. Unlike primary research, in which the researcher is uncovering new information and creating new knowledge, secondary research focuses on information that has already been acquired and documented. Secondary research is used to present an overview of the current state of knowledge in a field. It can also be used to highlight areas or gaps in existing information where additional primary research is needed.

It is wise to complete a desk review as an initial step in:

Proposal research and development

Program design

Qualitative or quantitative primary research activities

Community assessments (reviewed in WI-HER's Data Collection for Community Assessments training )

Program reporting

Why complete a desk review?

As secondary research, a desk review serves a very specific purpose. A desk review can rarely completely replace primary research activities. However, it can provide an overview of relevant policies, programs, and primary research that has been completed on your specific topic. Desk reviews are especially helpful if there are a large number of reputable sources that have already written on your topic (you will learn more about assessing the quality of sources in Module 2). To be helpful, information presented in a desk review should be directly relevant to your topic and purpose .

Desk reviews may also help you justify primary research activities; if you can demonstrate a lack of literature on your topic or in your location of interest, you will be more successful in advocating for primary research. This primary research, or field research, will provide an opportunity to collect more specific information related to the work you are doing. For additional information about field research, you can access WI-HER's Data Collection for Community Assessments training .

What is Desk Research?

As the name implies, desk research is research that can be undertaken from your desk. This is why desk research is considered secondary research – it does not require leaving your desk to pursue the acquisition of new information.

There are two types of desk research:

Internal Desk Research : Refers to the review of data, reports, tools, or other resources developed by your organization (either publicly available or not). Depending on the context, it could also include internal information from partner organizations. However, not all information housed within your organization or a partner organization is considered internal. If you are reviewing materials that were produced or created from outside your organization that are kept on record in your organization (for example, an encyclopedia or a copy of a presentation from another organization), you are conducting external desk research.

External Desk Research : Refers to the review of data, reports, tools, or other resources that exist outside of your organization. Module 2 will cover how to find this information from reputable sources.

Other Secondary Research Formats

There are a number of other forms of secondary research with slightly different functions than a desk review, such as literature reviews, systematic reviews, and scoping reviews. The following sources will allow you to explore these common types of secondary research.

Literature Reviews

Please watch the video "What's a Literature Review?" and review the content on the webpage.

Systematic Reviews

Please review the webpage.

Scoping Reviews

Please watch "Part 1: Scoping reviews: an overview with examples" (the first video on the page).

Activity: Compare and Contrast Secondary Research Formats

Use the form below to complete the activity.

Desk Review Process

Pre-writing: the research framework.

Before beginning the desk review, it is important to determine the focus of the review and its scope. For example, you may need to perform a desk review focusing on education systems in Argentina, but within the scope of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Agriculture, and Math). The focus and scope of your review may be well established based on your project, or it may be pre-determined by your client or research partners, but there may be flexibility. There will also need to be standards established relating to research parameters and style , which will be covered in later modules.

The purpose of the desk review should guide its development. Desk reviews may be used for internal knowledge development for your organization to inform proposal design or activity design. When responding to a request for proposals, the desk review can help identify prior work and opportunities for your organization to develop innovative solutions. The review may also be published for an external audience as a standalone document or as part of a larger report. Desk reviews may also be used as a preface for the presentation of primary research or fieldwork, providing background to the situation and pointing out the gaps in current knowledge future research or fieldwork will then cover.

The introduction of your desk review will include the purpose and rationale for your desk review. It is helpful to establish a clear vision for your desk review with precise limitations on its focus. You should identify a clear research question you would like to answer, and you should identify the aims or objectives necessary to answer this question. This research framework should guide your entire desk review process, and you should return to this framework throughout your research and writing to ensure the information you collect is relevant to the framework. For example, if you are writing a desk review on maternal health in Rwanda, your research framework may look like this:

Research question: What are the factors facilitating or hindering maternal health in Rwanda?

Aim 1: To describe the current development context in Rwanda, with a focus on health and gender.

Aim 2: To understand access to and utilization of maternal health services, including family planning, antenatal care, delivery, postpartum care, and neonatal care.

Aim 3: To review the quality of primary health care services, with an emphasis on services affecting maternal health.

Aim 4: To understand extrinsic sociocultural factors impacting maternal health, including marriage practices, childbearing practices, and economic situations.

Beginning the Writing Process

The review should begin with an outline that highlights key topics and sub-topics that need to be researched to address the main focus and aims of the review. You may need to complete initial key document reviews on your topic before you know what key sections will make up (or be included in) your outline. The WI-HER Desk Review outline, below, provides a helpful outline to begin conceptualizing the format for a desk review. When developing the outline, consider the major topics that are relevant to your area of focus. To return to the example of maternal health in Rwanda, you may develop an outline covering the following topics:

Rwanda: Country Overview

Women’s access to and utilization of care

Quality of primary health care services

Gender-based violence

Child marriage and early pregnancy

Women’s employment and economic independence

The topics you include in your outline should be directly related to your chosen topic, and you should continue to relate each section to your research framework. For example, when discussing women's employment, the information presented should be framed in the context of maternal health. To ensure relevance, you may discuss how childbearing affects employment or earnings or what policies exist for paternity leave or childcare.

During the outline phase, it is also helpful to identify key pieces of information that will be necessary in each section. For example, if providing a brief overview on general health context, it is important to determine what information is most relevant to include; in a desk review relating to maternal health, statistics on antenatal care and maternal mortality will be critical, and other health statistics may not be as useful for inclusion.

After developing an outline, you will have a better understanding of what types of resources you will need to gather. It is important to be thorough in the research process while maintaining efficiency. The research process will be discussed in greater detail in the next module.

The length of the desk review, and the amount of time you should dedicate to the review, will vary widely by project. Some reviews may not need as much information, and sources for certain topics may be more easily accessible or prolific. It is important to establish both the length of the desk review and the timeline for its completion when initially planning your project and developing the outline to ensure you complete an appropriate amount of research and writing. Define clearly with your client and with your colleagues the scope, limits, and timeline for the desk review project. Identify some benchmarks to keep you on track and to mark check-in moments that convene the group to voice challenges and confirm consensus that the targets are still on track. A typical desk review should range between 10 and 15 pages in length. You should likely not exceed 20 pages in length unless there are exceptional circumstances (i.e., large project scope).

The Assessment to Action Guide , developed for the USAID SHOPS Plus project, contains a detailed explanation of the desk review process. Examine the guide. The topics covered in this guide will be explained in greater detail during the course of these modules, but it can serve as a quick reference for you during the desk review process.

Examining a Desk Review

Follow the link to find an example of a desk review developed for the USAID Office of Food for Peace Food Security program in Liberia. Briefly review this document, keep the following questions in mind:

Why do you think this secondary research was necessary?

How is the document structured?

Does this desk review include any primary research?

After reviewing the document, use the button below to complete the activity.

Note: This is a lengthy desk review, and you do not need to read the entire document. Focus on exploring the structure of the document.

Activity: Examining a Desk Review

Wi-her desk review outline.

The WI-HER Desk Review outline, below, was developed based on desk reviews completed in a variety of focal areas. The outline can be easily adapted for a variety of contexts and provides insight into how to structure a desk review and identify important areas of focus.

You may find it useful to download the outline and adapt it for your own use.

Module 1 Knowledge Assessment

After completing all of the activities in Module 1, please complete the module knowledge assessment before proceeding to Module 2. You will receive feedback on all activities and the assessment based on the learning schedule you developed.

Proceed to Module 2

• Customer Relationship Management

Desk Research - Methodology and Techniques

As depicted by name Desk Research is the research technique which is mainly acquired by sitting at a desk .

Desk research is basically involved in collecting data from existing resources hence it is often considered a low cost technique as compared to field research, as the main cost is involved in executive’s time, telephone charges and directories. However, it could also be a complete waste of time and money if the researcher does not have the proper knowledge of how the research is performed.

Desk research is very effective and can be conducted in starting phase of market research as it is quite quick and cheap and most of the basic information could be easily fetched which can be used as benchmark in the research process.

There are basically two types of desk research techniques:

The main advantage here in performing internal desk research is that it involves internal and existing organizational resources to organize the collected data in such a way that it is not only efficient but also usable. Internal desk research is comparatively very cheap and effective as internal recourses are deputed and the expenditure in getting data from outside is less.

There could be two approaches for digging out the relevant information from internet, one is directly browsing the specific information from industrial, marketing or business sites and extracting the information out of these sites. Secondly, using the various search engines like www.google.com, www.yahoo.com, www.infoseek.go.com, www.altavista.com etc, for modulated searching.

The important aspect here is to refine the searching techniques in such a way that results are promising and relevant. For this it is necessary that the researcher should know the importance of the research and follow the guideline intellectually to reduce the efforts made and time consumed in searching.

Customers are the one who are considered the most informed as they are actually using products and services and are aware of the current market trends more than any other. Hence the feedback and information provided by customers is the most accurate and useful data which can be used most effectively in the further process of research.

  Related Articles

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• Market Research and CRM
• Market Research Process
• Field Research
• Data Analysis and Compilation

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Systematic approach to desk-top research and university projects

• Post author By admin
• Post date September 22, 2014
• No Comments on Systematic approach to desk-top research and university projects

How to conduct effective desk-top research?

This article is for any university student about to embark on writing essays or completing dissertations and projects for the first time. I have also run workshops introducing these methods and they do seem to be overwhelmingly useful even to more experienced researchers. This article is also intended to help  dissertation supervisors who may want to produce a ‘mini-systematic review’ for an undergraduate or postgraduate research project. This provides a robust methodology for the students to follow and is a much more rewarding and exacting project than a mere literature review. It will also satisfy requirements of those professional bodies who look for an element of ‘data analysis’ within the project.

So, let us embark on an interesting and hopefully informative journey about how to carry out effective desk-top research.

Introducing the systematic review

The word “ systematic ” in relation to a review involves the use of precise methods to gather and assess the results of research publications that (most importantly) minimises bias within the process. The result should be a robust and reliable assimilation of evidence in order to reach a reliable conclusion. Medical systematic reviews are conducted and published through the Cochrane Library  named after Archie Cochrane a Scottish doctor who established the idea of evidence-based medicine. Why do I mention systematic reviews in relation to desk-top research? Well – if you understand the premise and approaches of a systematic review and apply them to your essays, coursework and dissertations, then you will be undertaking a high quality piece of work (or suggesting a high quality assignment if you are setting the work). The steps highlighted below would also provide you with a methodology and the basis of a methods section for a dissertation.

Figure 1 illustrates the systematic approach.  The details on the left hand side are the minimum approach that could be undertaken in an essay or piece of desk-top research. For more in-depth undergraduate projects, and certainly for full systematic reviews, the details on the right hand side would need to be fully understood and reported.

Full systematic reviews can be conducted on any subject, not just medical ones. I have written  ones on education subjects – and here too, they are useful to  pool knowledge about best practice, or to evaluate new innovations in teaching for example. In education, often the methods are more relaxed as generally education papers do not meet the high quality standards of medical papers and their research designs. This is often due to not being able to randomise groups of students / learners due to the constraints of timetabling and classrooms. This isn’t the entire story though, as generally there is a feeling that much medical research and education research is simply not conducted as well as it could be .

Systematic principles – we should all use them!

A full systematic review is a serious piece of research and I like to teach the principles to my university students wherever possible because it provides them with a basis for doing high quality literature reviews, essays and dissertations. In fact I believe that anyone conducting research should know these principles. How many times do we hear that people are just using a Google Search or even Scholar, and they think it is research? The mainstay for any professional research must be the use of peer-reviewed and edited articles, and Scholar will not provide a robust enough search of these, and will also retrieve non-peer-reviewed reports and documents. Interesting as background reading certainly, but not for citation within a professional piece of work.

1) Setting the research question

The formulation of a precise research question is the starting point for any research and can be quite tricky. In medicine the  PICO framework  is used to define the various elements – population, intervention, comparison and outcome measure. For example I might be interested whether probiotics help people with diarrhoea.

Population – patients with diarrhoea Intervention – probiotics Comparison – no treatment Outcome – alleviation of diarrhoeal symptoms

So a question might be,

In patients with diarrhoea, do probiotics compared to no treatment, alleviate symptoms?

A PICO based question is the starting point of any dissertation student of mine, although not all the categories may apply. Once the question is set, the search strategy evolves and we can start generating keywords around the question categories.

But let’s take an education example. I’m interested in free online learning in the form of massive online open courses – MOOCs and the student experience.

P = learners I = MOOCs C = face to face/ traditional learning O = student experience

The question might be,

Do MOOCs enhance the experience of learners compared to traditional methods?

2) Deciding where to search?

A systematic review will aim to find ALL the articles in the world! This means not just using electronic databases, but hand searching books and journals, and contacting experts for unpublished or ongoing research. This can be quite a time intensive process. Today, the process is greatly helped by being able to save your searches within electronic databases, so once established (e.g. you might run a search at the start of your student project), you can simply run it again at the end to check for recent articles. Be pragmatic with the time you have – you might not be able to search everywhere, and the school of thought is that actually a good search of electronic databases will retrieve you the majority of articles these days, although do take care if you are particularly interested in more historic ones that may not be digitised.

So, where you decide to search will depend on what your organisation or local library has access to. Web of Knowledge and Medline are the mainstays of my research – which is both medical and educational. For my review on MOOCs I also used SCOPUS, IEEE and others. These cover both conference proceedings and workshop proceedings alongside published articles (original research, literature reviews, comments, opinions, letters etc).

3) Building up keyword lists for searching

From our PICO categories, we can start building up lists of keywords on similar themes.

P = learners, students, users I = MOOCs, xMOOC, cMOOC, massive online open course, free course C = face to face teaching, traditional teaching O = student experience, learning gain, knowledge gain

The next step is building up these words further. This is where I recommend using Wikipedia . It is a great keyword generator. I will also run some searches at this point to find relevant studies and look at their keywords to add to the list. If you were carrying out a full systematic review to publish, you would spend some time building up your keywords and then testing the results to ensure you were retrieving relevant articles. This iterative process might go on for some time, although for shorter-time scale projects such as undergraduate work, this may not be desirable.

4) Getting the keywords organised using Boolean logic

In some research I recently conducted looking at massive online open courses – MOOCs – I used six online databases to search, and used Boolean notation for searching with my keyword lists. There is a nice explanation of the use of Boolean logic on Ithaca College Library website. This in its simplest form uses the words (inputed in capitals – AND, OR, NOT) to combine keywords in order to expand and cross-reference your search accordingly. The Figure 2 summarises this approach.

You can also truncate words to search for all the variants of word endings using an asterisk *

e.g. MOOC MOOCs we can search for MOOC* e.g. Massive or massively we can search for massiv*

If searching phrases these need to be in quotations otherwise the individual words will be searched for separately and return thousands of results.

e.g. “massiv* online open cours*”

I’ve referred to the use of Boolean notation in another blog article – “ Seek and ye shall find ” complete with webcasts and instructions. This is following very simple principles and those expert in searching and forming Boolean instruction will be more complex than this. Here are some of the more commonly used ‘operators’ or instructions within the notation.

# means search OR – this will link together keywords and is used to broaden a search AND – this will cross-reference two searches (and not expand the search as you might suspect) NOT – this will exclude terms from the search

Going back to our question whether probiotics are effective for patients with diarrhoea, we could just haphazardly search for the keywords as shown below in Figure 3. However, as shown by the numbers, you will retrieve vast numbers of records and your search will not be specifically addressing your question.

The use of Boolean notation can be illustrated by the formation of a Venn diagram which shows the principles of combining the three separate searches using the word ‘AND’. The ‘OR’ term will enable you to expand out your searches such as for probiotics and lactobacillus. You may also search for humans and adults as a focus, and also the disease of interest. By using the ‘AND’ term you are cross-referencing the three searches to find those papers in the centre of the Venn diagram (Figure 4) – you can see a more manageable number of 1312 papers. These of course can be further limited perhaps by searching just for clinical trials.

5) Running the search and being organised!

Organisation is key and many online databases can set up accounts to save your searches (Medline is great for this) or export your outputs to a reference manager. I prefer to sometimes run the search, save the results as a ‘txt’ file and input into Microsoft Excel for analysis. The analysis steps might be important in a systematic review where you have pre-set what your research question is and your criteria for including studies. You can therefore use a new Excel sheet for each step in the analysis to maintain a good record of your process.

If you are completing a full systematic review, you will wish to refine your search in an iterative manner. That is, you will look at your search results to see if they are retrieving relevant articles, and refine the keywords and Boolean strategy if necessary to produce a more precise result. This step can in my experience take far more time than you might realise. The benefit is, once the search is right, you can save it and use it to update your coursework / project or review in the future.

6) What are study inclusion and exclusion criteria? (Could be optional depending on type of project or research)

For an undergraduate project you may not wish to be so stringent to think about what types of studies you wish to include or exclude. If you are completing a literature review, you may want just to provide an overall evaluation of everything that you have found. If you are being more systematic and wish to generate data for your project, you can follow the steps undertaken by a full systematic review, and record the numbers of studies you include and exclude at each phase. The beauty of this within a project or piece of research is that you are generating legitimate research data that can be displayed in a number of established figures and formats as illustrated below in Figure 5. Here, the results of a literature search and numbers of studies that are excluded during the process are shown.

Some excellent details on how to report systematic review results can be found not he following website, describing the PRISMA statements – preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta analyses .

In my studies of ‘education’, I set the entry gate quite wide so not to restrict the numbers of studies based on their design and quality. You will need to decide your inclusion and exclusion criteria at the start when you are writing your research proposal, or planning your essay. If you did wish to consider excluding types of articles, you might for example be doing a medical review and may well wish to only include randomised controlled trials. You might be researching an area of biomedical science and wish only to include animal investigations. If you are interested in systematic reviews in education specifically, this is a subject of development and debate the present time (e.g. Bennett 2005).

When you are analysing the results of your searches you will often soon spot ‘duplicate studies’. You will almost certainly find the same study on a number of databases, so you can use the ‘sort’ function to scan your lists of authors and remove duplicates. Studies can be duplicated in more subtle ways, for example an author might publish an abstract of data in a national journal, and then present the data at international conference. These are strictly duplicate studies because they contain the same data. The duplicate will need to be removed as shown in Figure 5.

7) Data collection and analysis

If you are intending to follow a systematic approach you will need to construct a series of spreadsheets to gather and organise your results. If you are completing a full systematic review you will establish the layout of a data extraction table prior to starting the review. This would include items such as author name, date of publication, methodology, outcome measures, and a host of other details. Again, the Cochrane organisation has further details on  data extraction .

Sorting your search results and applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria does take time, but ultimately it will give you the good results you are looking for. In a full-scale systematic review a number of authors would do these steps independently to ensure the process is accurate and to avoid bias introduced by personal choices and preferences. A third author can help discuss any areas of conflict or indecision. Filtering of the papers generally occurs in two phases:

Phase 1 of filtering. You can quickly filter your results often by just looking at the titles and author names to identify duplicates. You may need to review the abstracts at this point to ensure they match your inclusion criteria. Anything that is unclear will need to be checked by reviewing the full paper.

Phase 2 of selecting and filtering. If your inclusion criteria is looking for a specific methodology – e.g. randomised controlled trial, or specific subset of articles – e.g. animal studies, if you cannot glean this information from the abstract you will need the full paper to review.

So you might go through a phase of ordering full papers, and again use a reference manager of file system on your computer to organise yourself. I generally obtain the full paper for every article as I go along.

8) Qualitative versus quantitive analysis

For a full systematic review, if you have identified enough studies you can then extract data for pooling in a meta-analysis to provide quantitative data. As part of a review it is also good practice to provide a brief ‘narrative’ of the papers identified, and also to summarise your results in table form. The extent to which you do all of this will depend on the numbers of papers retrieved, and for the purposes of ‘containing’ an undergraduate project within 5000 words which is often the limit, you may need to restrict the textual explanations of the papers.

Providing the ‘narrative’ is often the part that students struggle to do within project result sections, therefore it is worth gaining a deeper understanding of the approaches and styles that can be undertaken. Popay et al in 2006 wrote a report on narrative synthesis that may be a starting point.

9) Finishing off and identifying themes and conclusions

If you have adhered to your question, keywords and inclusion / exclusion criteria, you should end up with a corpus (body of literature) directly relevant to your question. Depending on the volume of papers retrieved you may be able to look for sub-themes and organise your discussion around these. For example, searching for probiotics and diarrhoeal disease may reveal areas of research focusing on children as opposed to adults for example. The research may focus on different types of bacteria or blends of bacteria. A systematic approach is a great way of organising your research from start to finish!

Bennett, J., Fred Lubben , Sylvia Hogarth & Bob Campbell (2005). Systematic reviews of research in science education: rigour or rigidity?, International Journal of Science Education, 27:4, 387-406.

Cochrane Library (2014). About Cochrane Systematic Reviews and Protocols. Available:  http://www.thecochranelibrary.com/view/0/AboutCochraneSystematicReviews.html

Popay, J., Roberts, H., Sowden, A., Petticrew, M., Arai, L., Rodgers, M., … & Duffy, S. (2006). Guidance on the conduct of narrative synthesis in systematic reviews. A product from the ESRC methods programme. Version, 1.

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What is Desk Research? A Guide + Examples

Desk research can help you make data-driven decisions, define or adapt strategies, and uncover untapped market potential to drive growth – when it’s done right!

Nowadays, we have all the information we need at our fingertips; but knowing where to find the right data quickly is key.

So, what is desk research? What does it involve, and how can Similarweb Research Intelligence help?

Let’s find out.

What is desk research?

Desk research is a type of market research that uses existing data to support or validate outcomes and conclusions. Also known as secondary research , it’s a cost-effective way to obtain relevant data from a broad range of channels.

How is desk research used?

From small start-ups to established businesses, doing desk research provides you with crucial insights into trends, competitors, and market size . Whatever you do, desk research can help with product positioning and guide data-driven business decisions that help you become the ultimate competitor and find new ways to grow.

According to the latest data on the Internet of Things , around 130 new devices connect to the web every second. Stats on the state of data show we create and consume data at an exponential rate–data interactions will only continue to rise.

Primary vs. secondary research – what’s the difference?

Most market research methods fall into either primary or secondary research. When we talk about desk research, we tend to focus only on secondary methods. However, most primary research can also be done remotely, from a desk.

Primary research is self-conducted research that gathers data to answer questions. It usually involves going directly to a source, such as a customer or a prospect. Compared to secondary research, it takes longer, costs more, and demands more resources. Primary research methods include interviews, market research surveys , questionnaires, competitor reviews, market mapping , focus groups, etc.

Secondary research is the synthesis or summary of existing research using previously gained information from various sources. Most market research starts with secondary research: It aims to provide a researcher or analyst with a basis of knowledge formed from existing data. Secondary research methods include collecting data from the internet, government databases, reports, and academic journals, to name just a few.

Pros and cons of desk research

As with any type of market research, you need to choose the right method to deliver the best outcome for your research goal. Desk research is advantageous for several reasons, but it won’t always suit every market research project. Market research best practice tells us that we should use desk-based research before primary research – as this helps to reduce or refine the scope of the work before the second, more costly phase.

Here’s a summary of the pros and cons of desk research.

Advantages of desk-based research

Doing secondary market research is highly beneficial; here’s why.

• Low cost – most secondary research sources are low-to-no cost.
• Speed – as the data already exists, data collection is quick.
• Clarity – desk research drives & add-value to primary research actions.
• Scalability – due to the large datasets used in secondary research.
• Availability – pre-collected data is readily available to analyze.
• Insightful – get valuable insights and help resolve some initial research questions.

Disadvantages of desk-based research

As any good researcher will attest, it’s always good to look at a topic from every angle. Here are a few things to consider before starting any secondary research process.

• Out of-date data – consider if the coverage dates of the research are relevant. In a fast-moving market, having access to up-to-date information could be critical.
• Lack of perceived control over the data – secondary research is undertaken by a third party; as such, methodology controls need to be reviewed with caution.
• No exclusivity – desk research data is widely available and can be used by other researchers.
• Verification & interpretation – particularly when working with large data sets, it can take time to analyze and review to ensure the information is suitable for your research.

Types of desk-based research

Nowadays, you can do most market research from a desk. Here, I’ll focus solely on secondary research methods: Where finding and using the right resources is key. The data you use needs to be up-to-date and should always come from a trusted source.

Desk research methods – internal data resources

Before stepping into external research, look for any relevant internal sources. This data can often prove invaluable, and it’s a great place to start gathering insights that only you can see. The information is already yours, so aside from the fact it won’t cost a dime, it’s data your rivals won’t have access to.

Sources of internal information that can help you do desk research include:

• Historical campaign and sales analysis: Everything from website traffic and conversions through to sales. Accessible through your own analytics platform(s).
• Website and mobile application data: Your own platforms can also tell you where users are – such as the device split between mobile and desktop.
• Existing customer information: audience demographics , product use, and efficiency of service.
• Previous research conducted by other analysts: Even if the research seems unrelated, there could be indicative information within.

Desk research methods – external data resources

Using external data sources for desk research is an ideal way to get information about market trends, and explore a new topic.

• The internet: A virtual aggregator of all secondary research sources – always validate findings with credible sources.
• Commercial resources: Research associations and company reports usually cost money but give you data that’s specific to your industry/aim.
• Trade association reports: To see if there’s a trade association of interest, do a quick search online or use the Encyclopedia of Associations , the Directory of Associations , or the National Trade and Professional Associations Directory
• Industry Experts: Expert consultancy is an efficient way of getting information from someone who has ‘been there, done that.’ Also, consider ‘influencers.’
• Research associations & journals: Most research associations are independent and offer bespoke, specialized reports.
• Media coverage: TV, radio, newspapers, and magazines can often help uncover facts and relevant media stories related to your topic.
• Market research intelligence software: Platforms like Similarweb give you actionable insights into industry and competitors’ trends. With access to mobile app intelligence, you get a complete picture of the digital landscape.
• Government & non-government agencies: In the US, the biggest generator of data is the federal government. US Census Bureau , Congressional Research Service , US Government Publishing Office , US Small Business Administration , and the Department of Education . Most information from these sources is free.
• Local government sites: A reliable source to find data on population density or employment trends.
• Public library records: Access data via the Digital Public Library of America in the US or the National Archives in the UK.
• Competitor information: Sign-up for mailing lists, view comparison reports, and read online reviews.
• Educational institutions: Academic research papers and journals are well-researched. If you can find a relevant one, you’ll likely get solid data from credible sources.

How to choose the best type of desk research

With so many freely-available sources online for desk-based research; it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. The best guidance I can offer is to keep a list of key questions you are trying to answer with this research, and consider:

• What are you hoping to learn from your research?
• Why is this data relevant?
• Is there an action you can take from this information?
• How up-to-date is the data you are using?

Always keep the questions you’re trying to answer front of mind. It’ll help you stay focused and keep your desk research on the right track. Time and money will usually determine the right type of desk research to use, but, even then, it’s important to stay focussed on where you spend your time vs. the return on that investment.

Inspiration: This article outlines some of the best market research questions to ask.

How to do desk research in five steps

Follow these steps to guide you through doing desktop research:

1. Clearly define your research topic Identify your topic and its purpose, then list any relevant research attributes.

2. Select appropriate resources Make a list of sources that’ll provide relevant information for your research topic.

3. Look for existing data Once you’ve collated your research sources, look for internal and external data relevant to your research topic. Remember to only use data from authentic sources.

4. Collate, compare & assemble Next, you’ll need to collate all the data you’ve obtained, remove any duplication, and bring it together into a usable format.

5. Data analysis The final step of doing desk research is to analyze the data. At this point, you should be able to see if your research questions have been answered. If any questions remain unanswered, go back to step 2, and look for alternative resources that will help you get clearer insights.

Desk-based research tools

Online resources are by far your most valuable asset for doing secondary research. However, software like Similarweb Digital Intelligence , Google Analytics (GA), and Google Search Console (GSC) can save you time and give you a more visually-appealing view of relevant data.

My list of go-to tools for desk research includes:

• Google Analytics & Search Console – your own site’s performance and visitor stats.
• Similarweb Digital Research Intelligence – uncover market, industry & competitor trends across web, mobile, and apps.
• Tableau – data visualization for presenting your findings.
• Competitor data – on rival’s websites, newsletters, and social media accounts.

Read: The best market research tools of 2023

Note that GA and GSC are free to use but limited in terms of what you can see outside your own site. With Similarweb, you can access virtually limitless industry-wide data.

Stop Guessing, Start Analyzing

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How Similarweb helps with desk research

Here are just a few examples of how Similarweb Digital Research Intelligence can help you with secondary research.

• Benchmarking yourself against your industry – Benchmarking suite
• Understand how competitor websites and apps perform – Company research module
• Get a full picture of your industry – Market research & industry analysis tools
• Understand how apps are impacting your market – App Intelligence
• Analyze consumer behavior – Audience analysis tool
• Understand the complete customer journey – Consumer journey tracker

Using research intelligence tools will save you time and money while removing bias from the data – ultimately giving you clarity and a complete view of the digital world relevant to your research topic.

Success Story: See how Airbnb uses Similarweb to reveal growth opportunities in new markets .

Desk research examples with Similarweb

A good example of desk research in action is looking into an industry to uncover market leaders, trends, relevant search trends, and an overview of a complete industry. Using the market analysis module in Similarweb, you can find out exactly what’s happening in your market, and make data-driven decisions that’ll help you increase market share , and drive faster, more sustainable business growth.

For this particular desk research example, I chose the airline industry.

Let’s dive in.

Industry Overview

See a snapshot of industry traffic and engagement metrics . This data is typically based on Similarweb’s index of the top 100 websites in a chosen vertical. You can easily create a custom industry , allowing you to do competitive benchmarking against specific companies in your market.

Industry Leaders

Quickly see who is winning in an industry using the Market quadrant analysis graph and industry leaders table. Analyze top-performing websites in your vertical, and dive into their traffic and engagement performance to view bounce rates, visit duration, monthly visits, month-on-month changes, unique visitors, pages/visits, and traffic share .

Industry Trends

Analyze trends in near real-time so you can take action when it matters most–not a quarter later. Create a personalized view of your industry for in-depth analysis and make informed decisions that will help you grow your market share.

Marketing Channels

Access valuable traffic metrics and insights for each marketing channel. See data for direct, social, display ads, paid search, referrals, emails, and organic traffic channels and evaluate performance for each. Uncover opportunities to grow your own traffic share, evaluate engagement and quality of traffic, and identify trends over time.

Search Trends (within an industry)

Discover trending topics and emerging search terms in any industry. View what’s trending, search volume, % change, volume trend, and traffic leaders for both branded and non-branded search in your sector. Use these insights to get an understanding of market demand, search intent, and audience interests within a specific category, brand, or product.

Demographics

Gain crucial insights into the audiences visiting your website, your competitors’ websites, and your industry as a whole. See gender and age distribution across web, mobile, or combined traffic channels, and compare your demographics with that of your rivals.

The market analysis element of Similarweb will help you answer some of your most important research questions, such as:

• How a specific industry grew over time
• Who the top and emerging players are in your industry
• Which products or services are trending and/or what are consumers searching for
• What demographics are relevant to you, and your competitors

The app intelligence module completes the picture and gives you a broad view of the digital landscape across your market. You can quickly see how apps are impacting your industry, and look at download, engagement, installs, ranking, and more.

Here, I’m sticking with the airline industry to establish whether or not android or iOS is the best fit for a new app. Immediately, I can see there are between 1-1.5M monthly active users on iOS vs. an equivalent of around 350,000k on Android.

Like what you see? Take a tour of Similarweb for yourself.

Discover industry insights for desk research here

Wrapping up

Good desk research helps you quickly uncover key information that can shape and steer successful market research projects. When done right, you’ll be able to answer questions and discover crucial data about your industry, competitors, and key trends to consider while building a strategy for growth.

Asking the right research questions from the onset and keeping these at the forefront of your mind throughout will save time and help direct your market analysis in the right direction.

Is desk-based research free?

Depending on the method used, desktop research can be done for free. If you require industry or government agency reports, these often carry a charge but are more likely to be free from bias when compared to commercially produced reports that (sometimes) receive sponsorship. 

Which businesses can utilize secondary desk research?

Desk-based research can uncover crucial insights into market trends, market sizing, and competitors. The information can be used by any size business to help guide strategic decision-making and help refine a product’s positioning.

Should you do secondary research before primary research?

Absolutely, yes. Secondary research should always come before primary or field research. The formative research phase helps pinpoint where more in-depth primary research is required. Desk research can also verify and support findings from field research but should not replace primary research–as they are each utilized under different circumstances.

Who does desk-based research?

Desk research can ‘technically’ be done by anyone, but it’s typically performed by a researcher, an analyst, or a marketing professional. Good market research has solid foundational data to drive critical business decisions. Experienced researchers and analysts are best-placed to spot opportunities, trends, and patterns when the stakes are this high.

So, while anybody can access secondary data free of charge, investing the necessary resources to do things right to get the most out of the process is essential.

by Liz March

Digital Research Specialist

Liz March has 15 years of experience in content creation. She enjoys the outdoors, F1, and reading, and is pursuing a BSc in Environmental Science.

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