The methods you use to analyse your data will

depend on whether you have chosen to conduct

qualitative or quantitative research
QUALITATIVE DATA ANALYSIS

To help you with the analysis of qualitative data, it is

useful to produce an interview summary form or a focus
group summary form which you complete as soon as
possible after each interview or focus group has taken
place.

This includes practical details about the time and

place, the participants, the duration of the interview or
focus group, and details about the content.
 Processing the data
You need to think about the data from the moment you
start to collect the information.

You need to judge the value of your data, especially

that which may come from dubious sources.

As your research progresses you need to interpret the

data so that you, and others, can gain an understanding
of what is going on.

Finally, you need to undertake the mechanical process

of analysing the data.
 QUANTITATIVE DATA
ANALYSIS
Computing software

If you have computing software available for you to use

you should nd this the easiest and quickest way to
analyse your data.

The most common package used by social scientists at

this present time is SPSS for windows, which has
become increasingly user-friendly over the last few years.
 Statistical techniques
For those who do not have
access to data analysis software, a
basic knowledge of statistical
techniques is needed to analyse
your data.

If your goal is to describe what

you have found, all you need to do
is count your responses and
reproduce them. This is called a
frequency count analysis.
 If there are any missing answers, a separate no answer
category needs to be included in any frequency count table.

In the nal report, some researchers overcome this problem

by converting frequency counts to percentages which are
calculated after excluding missing data.

However, percentages can be misleading if the total number

of respondents is fewer than 40.
 Finding a connection
Often you will need to nd out if there is a connection
between one variable and a number of other variables. For
example, a researcher might want to nd out whether there is
a connection between watching violent lms and aggressive
behaviour. This is called bivariate analysis.

In multivariate analysis the researcher is interested in

exploring the connections among more than two variables. For
example, a researcher might be interested in nding out
whether women aged 40-50, in professional occupations, are
more likely to try complementary therapies than younger,
non-professional women and men from all categories.