Primary v. Secondary (Empirical)

Primary or Secondary?

Answer the questions to see where your research article best fits.

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Did the authors of the article gather their own data?

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No

Yes

I'm not sure

Did the authors of the article analyze raw data for the first time?

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No

Yes

I'm not sure

Is the resource you're looking at considered a Clinical Guideline?

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No

Yes

I'm not sure

Does the resource identify itself in any of the following ways:

Randomized Controlled Trial, Case Study, Cohort Study, Survey Research, Retrospective Study, Clinical trial.

No

Yes

I'm not sure

Does the resource identify itself in any of the following ways:

Literature Review, Systematic Review, Meta-analysis, Patient education information,Book Chapter

No

Yes

I'm not sure

This is likely a primary source.

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This is likely asecondary source.

Try again

We're stumped.

Try reaching out to your professor, or email the library at reference@maryville.edu

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Clinical Guidelines

Clinical Guidelines provide a summary of existing literature to aid clinicians in diagnosing and treating illness. No experiments are performed or data gathered, and the documents make use of existing literature to draw conclusions. Articles from point-of-care tools like UpToDate or StatPearls are Clinical Guidelines.

"Gather their own data"

Look at the methods section of the article.*

• Did the authors of the article conduct an experiment?
• Did they send out a survey to gather information from a population?
• Did the authors work with human subjects to test a hypothesis?
• Is there any other evidence that the authors designed and conducted an experiment or study that involved some kind of activity other than reading and synthesizing existing research?

*Don't see a methods section? There's a good chance the authors didn't gather their own data.

Raw Data Analysis

aka Retrospective Studies

Primary sources can also take the form of Retrospective Studies. Retrospective Studies involve analyzing existing data (i.e. from a medical records system). This is common for studies that deal with topics that would be unethical to perform experiments to test. (Examples: using existing patient data to chart how diseases spread, or studying data about Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.)