Data Analysis / Results and Discussion

Data analysis is important in research because it makes studying data a

lot simpler and more accurate. It helps the researchers straightforwardly
interpret the data so that researchers don’t leave anything out that could
help them derive insights from it.

Data analysis is a way to study and analyze huge amounts of data.

Research often includes going through heaps of data, which is getting
more and more for the researchers to handle with every passing minute.

Hence, data analysis knowledge is a huge edge for researchers in the

current era, making them very efficient and productive.

Data analysis is the process of analyzing data in various formats. Even

though data is abundant nowadays, it’s available in different forms and
scattered over various sources. Data analysis helps to clean and
transform all this data into a consistent form so it can be effectively
studied. Once the data is cleaned, transformed, and ready to use, it can
do wonders. Not only does it contain a variety of useful information,
studying the data collectively results in uncovering very minor patterns
and details that would otherwise have been ignored.

So, you can see why it has such a huge role to play in research.
Research is all about studying patterns and trends, followed by making a
hypothesis and proving them. All this is supported by appropriate data.

Further in the article, we’ll see some of the most important types of data
analysis that you should be aware of as a researcher so you can put
them to use.

Looking at it from a broader perspective, data analysis boils down to two

major types. Namely, qualitative data analysis and quantitative
data analysis. While the latter deals with the numerical data, comprising
of numbers, the former comes in the non-text form. It can be anything
such as summaries, images, symbols, and so on.

Both types have different methods to deal with them and we’ll be taking
a look at both of them so you can use whatever suits your requirements.

Qualitative Data Analysis

 As mentioned before, qualitative data comprises non-text-based data,
and it can be either in the form of text or images. So, how do we analyze
such data? Before we start, here are a few common tips first that you
should always use before applying any techniques.

Familiarizing Get a basic overview of the data and try spotting any details
with the data manually, if possible.

Defining Define your objectives and know what questions this data can
objectives answer.

Figure out the broad ideas and assign them labels to structure the
Make your plan
data.

Start looking for patterns and connections in data using data

Find patterns
analysis techniques.

Now, let’s move ahead and see where the qualitative data analysis
techniques come in. Even though there are a lot of professional ways to
achieve this, here are some of them that you’ll need to know as a
beginner.

Narrative Analysis

If your research is based upon collecting some answers from people in

interviews or other scenarios, this might be one of the best analysis
techniques for you. The narrative analysis helps to analyze the
narratives of various people, which is available in textual form. The
stories, experiences, and other answers from respondents are used to
power the analysis.

The important thing to note here is that the data has to be available in
the form of text only. Narrative analysis cannot be performed on other
data types such as images. Content Analysis

Content analysis is amongst the most used methods in analyzing

quantitative data. This method doesn’t put a restriction on the form of
data. You can use any kind of data here, whether it’s in the form of
images, text, or even real-life items.

Here, an important application is when you know the questions you need
to know the answers to. Upon getting the answers, you can perform this
method to perform analysis to them, followed by extracting insights from
it to be used in your research. It’s a full-fledged method and a lot of
analytical studies are based solely on this.

Grounded Theory

Grounded theory is used when the researchers want to know the reason
behind the occurrence of a certain event. They may have to go through
a lot of different use cases and comparing them to each other while
following this approach. It’s an iterative approach and the explanations
keep on being modified or re-created till the researchers end up on a
suitable conclusion that satisfies their specific conditions.

So, make sure you employ this method if you need to have certain
qualitative data at hand and you need to know the reason why
something happened, based on that data.

Discourse Analysis

Discourse analysis is quite similar to narrative analysis in the sense that

it also uses interactions with people for the analysis purpose. The only
difference is that the focal point here is different. Instead of analyzing the
narrative, the researchers focus on the context in which the conversation
is happening.

Quantitative Analysis

Quantitative analysis involves any kind of analysis that’s being done on

numbers. From the most basic analysis techniques to the most
advanced ones, quantitative analysis techniques comprise a huge range
of techniques. No matter what level of research you need to do, if it’s
based on numerical data, you’ll always have efficient analysis methods
to use.

There are two broad ways here; Descriptive statistics and inferential

analysis. 
However, before applying the analysis methods on numerical data, there
are a few pre-processing steps that need to be done. These steps are
used to make the data ‘ready’ for applying the analysis methods.

Make sure you don’t miss these steps, or you will end up drawing biased
conclusions from the data analysis. IF you want to know why data is the
key in data analysis and problem-solving, feel free to check out this
article here. Now, about the steps for PRE-PROCESSING THE
QUANTITATIVE DATA.

Data Making sure the data doesn’t come from invalid or

Validation fraudulent sources.

Data Editing Dealing with errors or missing values in the data.

Assigning labels and codes to the data according to the

Data Coding
specific situation.

Descriptive Statistics

Descriptive statistics is the most basic step that researchers can use to
draw conclusions from data. It helps to find patterns and helps the data
‘speak’. Let’s see some of the most common data analysis techniques
used to perform descriptive statistics.

Mean

Mean is nothing but the average of the total data available at hand. The
formula is simple and tells what average value to expect throughout the
data.

Median

The median is the middle value available in the data. It lets the
researchers estimate where the mid-point of the data is. It’s important to
note that the data needs to be sorted to find the median from it.

Mode
The mode is simply the most frequently occurring data in the dataset.
For example, if you’re studying the ages of students in a particular class,
the model will be the age of most students in the class.

Standard Deviation

Numerical data is always spread over a wide range and finding out how
much the data is spread is quite important. Standard deviation is what
lets us achieve this. It tells us how much an average data point is far
from the average.

Related Article: The Best Programming Language for Statistics

Inferential Analysis

Inferential statistics point towards the techniques used to predict future

occurrences of data. These methods help draw relationships between
data and once it’s done, predicting future data becomes possible.

Correlation

Correlation s the measure of the relationship between two numerical

variables. It measures the degree of their relation, whether it is causal or
not. 

For example, the age and height of a person are highly correlated. If the
age of a person increases, height is also likely to increase. This is called
a positive correlation.

A negative correlation means that upon increasing one variable, the

other one decreases. An example would be the relationship between the
age and maturity of a random person.

Regression

Regression aims to find the mathematical relationship between a set of

variables. While the correlation was a statistical measure, regression is a
mathematical measure that can be measured in the form of variables.
Once the relationship between variables is formed, one variable can be
used to predict the other variable.

This method has a huge application when it comes to predicting future

data. If your research is based upon calculating future occurrences of
some data based on past data and then testing it, make sure you use
this method.

A Summary of Data Analysis Methods

Now that we’re done with some of the most common methods for both
quantitative and qualitative data, let’s summarize them in a tabular form
so you would have something to take home in the end.

Quantitative Data
   
Analysis Methods

Descriptive Statistics Mean  Finding average.

Median Mid-point of data.

Mode Most frequent data point.

Standard
The spread of data.
Deviation

The statistical relationship

Inferential Analysis Correlation
between variables.

The mathematical relationship

Regression
between variables.

Before we close the article, I’d like to strongly recommend you to check
out some interesting related topics:
Conclusion

That’s it! We have seen why data analysis is such an important tool
when it comes to research and how it saves a huge lot of time for the
researchers, making them not only efficient but more productive as well.
Moreover, the article covers some of the most important data analysis
techniques that one needs to know for research purposes in today’s age.
We’ve gone through the analysis methods for both quantitative and
qualitative data in a basic way so it might be easy to understand for
beginners.

summary of findings 
— A table summarising key information
about the most
important treatment outcomes, including a
summary of the results and the certainty of
the evidence.
Synonyms:
summary of findings, iSoF, interactive summary of findings

Full explanation:
A summary of findings table presents the key information about
the most important outcomes of a treatment, including the best
effect estimate and the certainty of the evidence for each
outcome.

An interactive summary of findings table enables users to view

more or fewer outcomes and more or less information about
each outcome, to view the effect estimates presented in different
ways (with numbers, words or visualisations), and to access
explanations of the information that is presented.
SUMMARY OF FINDINGS:
 Due to clarity demand, summary of findings must
contain each specific question under the statement of
the problem and must be written first to be followed
by the findings that would answer it.
 The findings should be textual generalizations, that
is, a summary of the important data consisting of text
and numbers.
 No deductions, nor inference, nor interpretation
should be made otherwise it will only be duplicated in
the conclusion.
 Only the important findings, the highlights of the data,
should be included in the summary, especially those
upon which the conclusions should be based.
 Must be stated as concisely as possible.
 Use past tense to present the result of findings of the
investigation.