Hello all,

I am planning on basing my Master dissertation on a dataset. It is in the field of politics. The problem is that it is a secondary source. Therefore, will my mark suffer because of it? I will be using primary sources (newspapers, government papers). However, these will serve to complement the findings from my empirical analysis. I will use only a few of them as well.
I am so scared because I do not see how else I could research my project, except doing my own fieldwork and subsequently establishing my own dataset. This will take ages and I have only up to September to do this.
Finally, I am planning on doing 25-35 interviews (I'll be lucky if I get that many!) with people from the relevant countries who presently reside in London. I will like to use this to give me more insights, Since I only came up with this idea this week, I was wondering how feasible it would be? I have to submit a first draft by 1st August, and usually people hate interviews. Also, should I even bother, given that it is only a few interviews?

I think you should talk to your supervisor urgently and get some reassurance. I think for a masters dissertation you will be fine working with an established dataset, assuming it's a decent one, but think your interview plans sound worrying. Like any research method interviews are only valuable if done properly. If you plan on doing 25 interviews properly then I doubt you will be submitting on time. It involves human subjects, so will need to go through the ethical approval process, which if the subjects can be considered vulnerable in the slightest, will require you to jump through a lot of research design hoops. This takes time. Transcribing and analysing the interviews takes up much more time than people ever think, especially if you are not familiar with doing this. Even just the logistics of setting up interviews takes ages. In other words, I really doubt you've got the time to do it properly, and if you don't do it properly, it will look bad.

Hi,
Regarding the use of secondary data, it will depend on your institution policy, but in principle, the use of secondary data sources is considered appropriate for a Master dissertation.
Re the use of mixed-methods... I would not recommend them for a 3-4 months project, its time consuming and requires considerations in terms of both philosophical issues and matching of the qualitative and quantitative data (but check Abbas Tashakkori and Charles Teddlie books if you are considering it).
Finally, as bewildered says it is not as much what you do, but that you do it properly.
Best of luck!

As others have confirmed, it is absolutely fine to use secondary data for a Masters dissertation (for the record, newspapers and government records are also secondary data and not primary). As it is now almost June, I think you should stick to secondary data analysis, and do a through job of that - in your discussion section you can address any methodology concerns, and discuss that the next step in this area of research would be to collect in some primary data to verify what you have found in the secondary data.... if you are desperate to collect in some primary data then keep it quantitative i.e on-line survey with fixed responses - you don't have time to set up, record, transcribe and analyse qualitative data. Good luck!