Entrepreneurship Professor Sergey Anokhin from Kent State University explains the benefits and drawbacks of working with secondary data in research. Unlike primary data-based research, that Dr. Anokhin compares to causation, secondary data collection and analysis is similar to effectuation, which many entrepreneurship researchers should find familiar. According to Sergey Anokhin, the benefits of secondary data include high speed and low cost of data collection; the availability of methodological help developed by other scholars who used the same data earlier; the ability to ‘enter the same river twice’ and augment the already collected data with more variables and years; the suitability of secondary data for cross-cultural research; and the generally sympathetic disposition of reviewers who understand the impossibility of collecting comparable variables one more time. The challenges include the amount of noise the researchers must deal with, the occasional data formatting nightmares, and the lack of easy opportunities to investigate novel research questions with the standard data available to many. Dr. Anokhin makes a case for using secondary data in entrepreneurship research as the field matures and the data requirements go up.

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