Unit 6: Business Decision Making - Sources for the collection of data
By-Product data
Introduction
By-product data is best described as the data that is collected as a result of a different process or system that was designed for a different purpose.
If you were to go out and collect data about unemployment then this would be an example of primary data.
If you were to use data collected by a third party on unemployment then this would be an example of secondary data.
However if you were to pay benefits to the unemployed and required them to fill in a claim form, the data from the claim process would be by-product data.
The term comes from the manufaturing sector where the manufacturing process would often result in by-products.