Secondary Data Analysis

Whereas primary data analysis is analysing the original data from a research initiative, secondary data analysis means analysing data that someone else has collected for another purpose.

Organisations, research entities and government bodies often share data with the public or other approved users and organisations to maximise the data’s usefulness. Secondary data can be qualitative, quantitative or both. Secondary qualitative data typically includes such items as newspapers and blog posts.

Why use secondary data and secondary data analysis?

There are a number of advantages to using secondary data and secondary data analysis. First, secondary data can save you time, resources and money, as you don’t have to duplicate potentially expensive research work that’s already been done. Even if you have to purchase the secondary data, that’s often more cost-effective than starting your research from scratch. And this way, you can focus your time and effort on analysing the data, not collecting it and preparing it for analysis.

Second, assuming that the secondary data is up-to-date, unbiased and from a trusted source, it can provide information of remarkable breadth and depth about people and organisations that might otherwise be difficult to come by. For example, government agencies often conduct research on a national scale, and they may conduct the same research over a period of years. Having access to such information enables you to examine changes and trends over time.

Nexis Data as a Service

In today’s data-driven world, companies need to derive actionable information from Big Data, but the sheer volume of content and information available can be daunting. To succeed, you need to cut through this vast ocean of content and get only the relevant information you need for your secondary data analysis.

Because LexisNexis has more than 40 years of experience as a content aggregator, we’ve been able to build up a massive source universe. Our easy-to-integrate application programming interfaces (APIs) can deliver valuable, targeted media monitoring data to help you conduct qualitative data analysis.

Our Nexis Data as a Service (DaaS) offering connects you to highly relevant content to suit your secondary data-analysis needs. Nexis DaaS provides access to:

• News Data: Access leading daily newspapers from around the world, as well as radio and TV broadcast transcripts. These deliver comprehensive coverage of and commentary on political, social, and economic happenings both locally and across the globe. Nexis DaaS also features global online news sources in 75 languages and from more than 100 countries. Plus, we add millions of articles and posts to this collection daily.

• Company and Industry Data: Regardless of the data-analysis tools and techniques your organisation uses, you can benefit from the volume of our data. Nexis DaaS business data includes company profiles, corporate hierarchies, company and financial reports, mergers-and-acquisitions activity and more. With this information at your fingertips, you can analyse financial trends, track your brand portfolio and perform other key Big Data applications.

• Legal Information: Nexis DaaS also features a plethora of legal data for your secondary data analysis, including global treatises and court dockets, risk management and compliance data on politically exposed persons (PEPs), sanctions and watchlists, and supply-chain information related to manufacturing and shipping.

• Magazines and Trade Publications: Access targeted magazines and trade journals for crucial perspectives and intelligence on industry drivers and company events.

• Intellectual Property (IP) and Patents Data: Find aggregated content from more than 80 data sources and patent authorities.

• Newswires and Press Releases: Stay up to date and ahead of the curve with our database of events and news of the day.

With Nexis DaaS, you can:

• leverage current and historical news articles for predictive analytics applications to better anticipate news cycles or track your brand portfolio
• find out where PR, marketing and sales initiatives are performing best with geo-location metadata
• evaluate the effectiveness of your messaging and campaigns by performing data sentiment analysis across global news data
• analyse the origins of negative sentiment to pinpoint the media outlets and influencers you need to engage

With secondary data across news and social commentary, organisations’ PR, marketing and sales teams can also collaborate to:

• facilitate a more holistic approach to prospect engagement
• optimize spending while maximizing reach
• amplify brand voice

The CORE advantage

The data wrangler you choose matters. That’s why we offer customers the Nexis DaaS CORE (Comprehensive, Optimal, Robust, Experienced) advantage:

• comprehensive because it taps into an array of alternative data sources to enable secondary data analysis and interpretation for a range of financial, corporate, risk, academic and brand data research
• optimal you gain access to semi-structured data sets in line with your organisation’s secondary data analysis requirements, strengthening your Big Data initiatives
• robust because it fuels your secondary data analysis by providing smart content enriched with semantic analysis; this drives precision search, better relevance, and faster discovery for quantitative and qualitative data analysis
• experienced because it relies on our decades of expertise as a content aggregator.  LexisNexis was a forerunner in employing machine learning and data visualisation in our applications many years before they hit the mainstream. Today, our customers benefit from the wisdom of our experience and turn their data into actionable insights.

Learn more about how Nexis DaaS can power your secondary data analysis and empower your decision-making.