We’re all familiar with the standard justification for secondary research – it’s a process to contextualise what’s already known to plan more focused (primary) research studies. Among research practitioners and non-researchers, secondary research is rarely thought of as a method in itself – and rather a supplementary phase of work before the real investigation begins.

In this talk, we hope to convince fellow researchers that secondary research can be more powerful and impactful than just offering a foundational starting point. With the right “research infrastructure‚” secondary research can allow us to step back, triangulate and evaluate not only a larger corpus of data but also consider data from different sources and teams to make better-informed decisions.

We share how we evolved our secondary research processes to do more efficient research and help our teams make more informed decisions.