What is the term for data collected from organizational records, health center records, and other public records?

The term for data collected from organizational records, health center records, and other public records is secondary data. This type of data is generated from existing sources rather than collected firsthand for a specific study or project. Secondary data encompasses databases, registries, and reports that have been created for purposes other than the immediate research at hand.

In contrast to primary data, which involves the direct collection of information through surveys, interviews, or experiments, secondary data provides a pre-existing body of information, allowing researchers to leverage data that has already been gathered, saving time and resources. This makes secondary data particularly useful in fields like public health, where accessing recent and comprehensive datasets from existing records can provide valuable insights into trends or outcomes without the need to start data collection from scratch.