Data Analysis

What is data analysis in research?

Definition of research in data analysis: Research data analysis is a process used

by researchers for reducing data to a story and interpreting it to derive insights. The
data analysis process helps in reducing a large chunk of data into smaller
fragments, which makes sense.

Three essential things take place during the data analysis process — the first data
organization. Summarization and categorization together contribute to becoming
the second known method used for data reduction. It helps in finding patterns and
themes in the data for easy identification and linking. Third and the last way is data
analysis – researchers do it in both top-down or bottom-up fashion.

Marshall and Rossman, on the other hand, describe data analysis as a messy,
ambiguous, and time-consuming, but a creative and fascinating process through
which a mass of collected data is being brought to order, structure and meaning.

We can say that “the data analysis and interpretation is a process representing the
application of deductive and inductive logic to the research and data analysis.”

Why analyze data in research?

Researchers rely heavily on data as they have a story to tell or problems to solve. It
starts with a question, and data is nothing but an answer to that question. But, what
if there is no question to ask? Well! It is possible to explore data even without a
problem – we call it ‘Data Mining’ which often reveal some interesting patterns
within the data that are worth exploring.

Irrelevant to the type of data, researchers explore, their mission and audiences’
vision guide them to find the patterns so they could shape the story they want to
tell. One of the essential things expected from researchers while analyzing data is
to stay open and remain unbiased towards unexpected patterns, expressions, and
results. Remember, sometimes, data analysis tells the most unforeseen yet exciting
stories that were not at all expected at the time of initiating data analysis.

Types of data in research

Every kind of data has a rare quality of describing things after assigning a specific
value to it. For analysis, you need to organize these values, processed and
presented in a given context, to make it useful. Data can be in different forms, here
are the primary data types

 Qualitative data: When the data presented has words and descriptions, then
we call it qualitative data. Although you can observe this data, it is
subjective and, therefore, harder to analyze data in research, especially for
comparison. Example: Quality data represents everything describing taste,
experience, texture, or an opinion is considered as a quality data. This type
of data is usually collected through focus groups, personal interviews, or
using open-ended questions in surveys.
 Quantitative data: Any data expressed in numbers of numerical figures are
called quantitative data. This type of data can be distinguished into
categories, grouped, measured, calculated, or ranked. Example: questions
such as age, rank, cost, length, weight, scores, etc. everything comes under
this type of data. You can present such data in graphical format, charts, or
you can apply statistical analysis methods to this data. The (Outcomes
Measurement Systems) OMS questionnaires in surveys are a significant
source of collecting numeric data.
 Categorical data: It is data presented in groups. However, an item included
in the categorical data cannot belong to more than one group at a time.
Example: a person responding to a survey by telling his living style, marital
status, smoking habit, or drinking habit comes under the categorical data. A
chi-square test is a standard method used to analyze this data.

Data analysis in qualitative research

Data analysis and research in qualitative data work a little differently than the
numerical data as the quality data is made up of words, descriptions, images,
objects, and sometimes symbols. Getting insight from such complicated
information is a complicated process, hence is typically used for exploratory
research and data analysis.

Finding patterns in the qualitative data

Although there are several ways to find patterns in the textual information, a word-
based method is the most relied and widely used global technique for research and
data analysis. Notably, the data analysis process in qualitative research is manual.
Here the researchers usually read the available data and find repetitive or
commonly used words.
For example: while studying data collected from African countries to understand
the most pressing issues faced by people, researchers might find “food” and
“hunger” are the most commonly used words and will highlight them for further
analysis

The keyword context is another widely used word-based technique. In this method,
the researcher tries to understand the concept by analyzing the context in which the
participants use a particular keyword.

For example, researchers conducting research and data analysis for studying the
concept of ‘diabetes’ amongst respondents might analyze the context of when and
how the respondent has used or referred to the word ‘diabetes.’

Scrutiny based technique is also one of the highly recommended text analysis
methods used to identify a pattern in the quality data. Compare and contrast is the
widely used method under this technique to differentiate how a specific text is
similar or different from each other.

For example: to find out the “importance of resident doctor in a company,” the
collected data is divided into people who think it is necessary to hire a resident
doctor and those who think it is unnecessary. Compare and contrast is the best
method that can be used to analyze the polls having single answer questions types.

Metaphors can be used to reduce the data pile and find patterns in it so that it
becomes easier to connect data with theory.

Variable Partitioning is another technique used to split variables so that researchers

can find more coherent descriptions and explanations from the enormous data

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Interpretation of the results

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