Hello!

I am trying to conduct a Systematic Literature Review for my research. I am following guidelines on Barbara Kitchenham (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/302924724_Guidelines_for_performing_Systematic_Literature_Reviews_in_Software_Engineering ).

I understand that I need to select primary research papers and analyze them for SLR. But I am a bit confused about distinguishing whether a paper is a primary or secondary research. For example, this paper https://revistas.udea.edu.co/index.php/ingenieria/article/view/335722 uses Action Research Methodology and Focus Group as a research methods.

As they validate their approach on a focus group, could it be considered primary research? The confusion I have is that they use focus groups only to validate the approach but not to gather data before the analysis of the possible approach.

Could someone, please, clarify it for me

Thank you for your help,
Best Regards, Oleksandr