DA0-002 Data Concepts and Environments Practice Question
A data scientist is building a model to predict customer churn. The company's internal CRM system provides customer demographics and transaction history. They also purchase demographic data from a third-party vendor. How should the purchased data be classified?
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — candidates often confuse 'secondary data' with 'structured data' because purchased data is often delivered in a structured format like CSV, but the classification is based on data origin and collection purpose, not its structure.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Secondary data
Purchased demographic data from a third-party vendor is classified as secondary data because it was originally collected by another entity for a different purpose and is being reused by the data scientist for churn prediction. Secondary data contrasts with primary data, which is collected firsthand for the specific analysis at hand. This classification is independent of whether the data is structured or unstructured.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Secondary data
Why this is correct
Purchased vendor demographics were collected by another party for its own purposes, not by the company for this churn model. That external origin makes it secondary data, satisfying the stem's classification requirement for the third-party demographic feed.
- ✗
Internal data
Why it's wrong here
Data bought from a third-party vendor is external, not internal, because internal data originates within the organisation's own systems such as the CRM. It is tempting because the purchased records describe the company's own customers and are stored alongside CRM extracts, but provenance determines the classification.
- ✗
Structured data
Why it's wrong here
Structured describes the format of data, not its source, so it does not answer how purchased vendor data should be classified by origin. It is tempting because vendor demographic files typically arrive as tabular records, yet the question asks about provenance, making external the correct category.
- ✗
Primary data
Why it's wrong here
Purchased vendor demographics are external data, not primary data, which is collected firsthand by the organisation itself. It is tempting because the vendor gathered the records directly from its own sources, yet classification depends on the collecting organisation's relationship to the data, not the vendor's.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This DA0-002 practice question is part of Courseiva's free CompTIA certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the DA0-002 exam.