"How To Analyze Data In A Primary Research Study" by Melody Denny & Lindsay Clark

Link: https://writingspaces.org/how-to-analyze-data-in-a-primary-research-study/Links to an

external site.

After reading the article, you will:

 Identify the author's thesis

 What did you find valuable about this article?

 What did you find frustrating?

 Identify and include 1-2 quotes from the article to further explain why you found the

reading or text surprising, valuable, or frustrating.

Assignment Requirements:

 Word Count: 350

 Include MLA in-text citation 

 Respond to at least one of your classmates

The author's thesis is to inform students of the process of analyzing primary resources. They go

over different ways of gathering their data from their primary resources, including open ended

questions and closed ended questions. Something I found valuable from this article was that

having multiple people analyze the data that was obtain can help make the research more ethical

and accurate. In the article it says, "but generally speaking, it’s a good idea to have someone else

check your work and ensure you are ethically analyzing and reporting your data" (Denny and

Clark, 12). Not only does this make your research ethical, but it also can make it more credible
because by having someone else verify your work, it can make your findings more valid. I also

liked how in the article it says, "...some students might think that they can’t do primary research,

that this type of research is for professionals and scholars, but that’s simply not true" (Denny and

Clark, 3). At first, I thought the same thing, that creating primary research is hard and not

something any person can do, but after reading the article, I realized that this is not true. It

organized the process into simple steps that made it easier to understand what to do and provided

examples on how to apply these steps. Something I think is frustrating about the article is that it

talks about how you can present your data in many different ways, but something I think is

important to know that is not included, is whether the choice you make will affect how the

readers will interpret the data. How do we know if it is better to use a bar graph, a table, or a pie

chart to present our data. Another thing that the authors should have mention about is after we

have collected our data, how do we know what should be included in the graph and what

shouldn't be. I think knowing this can help make the results of the research and the way it comes

across more effective to the readers in trying to grasp the main idea.