Lost in a Giant Database: The Potentials and Pitfalls of Secondary Analysis for Deaf Education

Secondary research or archival research is the analysis of data collected by another person or agency. It offers several advantages, including reduced cost, a less time-consuming research process, and access to larger populations and thus greater generalizability. At the same time, it offers several limitations, including the fact that the original design of the study may not be adaptable to the purposes of the archival researcher. This paper describes an attempt to replicate the Kluwin and Stinson (1993) longitudinal study of the effects of mainstreaming deaf high school students by using the National Educational Longitudinal Study data set. The authors report several limitations to the secondary analysis of this kind of public data, including the need for better definitions of handicapping conditions in these large-scale studies, the inclusion of larger numbers of low-incidence handicaps, and the need for variables of use to researchers in specific handicaps.