Identifying Primary and Secondary Sources

Assessment 1
1. Identify a source for each of the following and state whether the source is primary or
secondary.
(a) Unemployment rates in Scotland between 2013 and 2020.
Office for National Statics – Secondary
(b) A company's profits from 2016 2020.
London Stock exchange - Secondary
(c) The number and size of training shoes sold in a sports shop over a particular weekend.
Calculate the difference of the beginning and ending stock
Adding the number of purchases of shoes to the beginning stock and subtracting the ending
stock to find the number of sales of shoes during the given weekend - primary
(d) The stall at a winter festival market with the largest number of customers.
Observation method should be used to estimate the number of customers as closely as
possible. - Primary
2. For each of the following situations, identify the most appropriate data collection method
and give a reason for your choice.
(a) The destinations that customers of a large travel company have booked to visit in
2020.
The company own database. The data is not publicly available hence it has to depend
on the company data.
(b) The number of cars travelling past a school between 8 am and 9 am.
Data is not readily available to use through secondary data sources. Therefore Physical
observation by person or can use electronic sensor to count the numbers.
(c) Opinions on the facilities available in a shopping centre.

As the opinions are subjective Customer interviews or surveys are used to collect data.
They must be taken individually.
(d) Customer satisfaction for the service provision by a major telecommunications
company.
Survey questionnaire is used to collect data. As the company is large population census
to difficult to obtain. Sample survey through a questionnaire is suitable.
3. For each of the following situations, identify and explain the most appropriate sampling
method.
(a) A survey of investment preferences for business clients in the age groups: 20 years
old to 39 years old, 40 years old to 59 years old, 60 years old and above.
The sampling method to be used for this is probability sampling technique, stratified
random sampling method. The sampling tray is divided into strata’s, age, categories which
is proposing. They are not naturally occurring. Also, people fall into one category has more
chance to fall into another category. And there is no possibility of overlapping of the
groups.
(b) Checking items for quality on a production line.
Systematic sampling method would be most appropriate as a production line involves in
continuous operation and a systematic selection of products. Further this is the most suitable
because in a production line the production is continuous.
(c) A survey of people in a busy shopping centre regarding a fashion magazine.
Quota Method
(d) A survey of political opinions across the country.
Clustered random sampling method as this would be broken down into geographical areas or
naturally occurring political ideologies.

4. In your own words provide a clear definition of each of the following types of data,
and provide one example for each.
a) Continuous data
Continuous data is the data that can be of any value. Over time, some continuous data
can change. It may take any numeric value, within a potential value range of finite or
infinite. The continuous data can be broken down into fractions and decimals.
Measurement of height and weight of a student, Daily temperature measurement of a
place, Wind speed measured daily, etc are some examples for it.
b) Discrete data
It a type of quantitative data which includes figures and statistics of non-divisible,
single points of data which it countable. It is used to count items such as number of
people, vehicles owned by an individual, products sold in the month etc.
c) Ordinal data
Ordinal data is qualitative data where the values have a relative position. These kinds of
data can be seen as somewhere in between qualitative and quantitative data. The ordinal
data cannot be used for statistical analysis because it only shows the order of events.
Ordinal data are data that have a certain order, which is not present in nominal data. Letter
grades in the exam (A, B, C, D, etc.) Education Level (Higher, Secondary, Primary)
Ranking of people in a competition (First, Second, Third, etc.) are some of the examples.
d) Qualitative data
Qualitative data can be observed and recorded. This data type is not numerical in
nature. This type of data is collected through various observational methods, one-to-one
interviews, focus groups, and similar methods. This type of research involves studying
the experience of individual people rather than measuring a specific quantity or
attribute and often use to study topics such as human behavior, emotions, and thoughts.

Assessment 2
1. (a) Creating the scatter diagram
(b) Correlation
Correlations
Online Salaes ((£000's)
Online Sales
((£000's)
Pearson Correlation .965** 1
Sig. (2-tailed) <.001
Sum of Squares and Cross-products 23292.857 396485.714
Covariance 3882.143 66080.952
N 7 7
**. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).