Primary Research

Primary Research is original research that you gather yourself. This enables us to gain data on what we are researching.
A few of the different ways that primary research can be conducted are, through:
Interviews - these can take place either on the phone or face to face.
Questionnaires - Surveys can be done on the Internet or by hand and posted back to the relevant place.
Focus Groups - a focus group is where a company shows a preview of a product to a group of people, and then asks them what they think of it).

Advantages -
Primary Research allows us to collect specific research issues and allows the researcher to control the search design.
Primary research also allows the researcher to have a great amount of control over certain things such as the project size and goal.

Disadvantages -
Primary Research can be very expensive. (for example the cost of the paper on which it is carried out)
Late responses may be gathered, and are to be expected.
And lastly, by the time the research is gathered it may be too late and out of date.

Examples:
 Radio Questionnaire 
The above link is an example of Primary Research that I have conducted. It is a survey I made in order to discover what people would like on/thought of a college radio station.
This allowed me to collect peoples opinions in a personal way, without them having to disclose any private details about themselves.