Commentary on ‘a Reflexive Account of Reusing Qualitative Data: Beyond Primary/secondary Dualism’ (Libby Bishop)

1.2 Researchers commonly place a study within their intellectual history, but practical detail like this is quite rare. It is as necessary, she suggests, to be reflexive about an encounter with secondary materials as it is about the actual encounter with respondents in real time. She explains clearly why this topic and method were chosen, in personal and practical terms – that is, notably the need to obtain first-hand experience of the use of Qualidata data sets, to better advise both depositors and users. Any researcher will emphathise with her detailed accounts of her approaches to her material, and the phases of her research the “meandering but not atypical path” to reassess what data were relevant. She concludes, convincingly, that the processes of doing primary and secondary research are more alike than not.