Analyzing and Interpreting Information

ANALYSIS OF ‘QUALITATIVE’ DATA ...........................................................3 THE THREE STEPS OF ANALYSIS...............................................................4

STEP ONE: READ THROUGH ALL THE INFORMATION............................................6 STEP TWO: CLUSTERING...............................................................................14

Widespread or Serious? Dimensions of a Problem ................................19 INTERIM SUMMARY.....................................................................................21 HOW TO ORDER ..........................................................................................26

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Complete Handbook and CD available from http://www.reportingskills.org/order.htm 2

Analysis of ‘Qualitative’ Data Data is Never Neutral!

In our opinion, everything is qualitative. I don’t see a great distinction between the ‘facts and figures’ in the previous section and what is generally termed qualitative data – answers to interview questions, results of Focus Group Discussions. The simple reason for this is that data is never ‘neutral’: everything means something.

In the ‘quantitative’ examples earlier (Opinion Poll) we saw that each data set was illustrated visually and explained / interpreted. In short, the quantitative was transformed into qualitative. The Case Study / Extended Exercise that runs through this programme (‘Children in Nepal’) will allow you to develop those skills of developing a whole and synthesised analysis of any data, one that ‘speaks’ to both left and right sides of the brain.

The different functions of the brain hemispheres are discussed later in this section, and it is useful to have some understanding of this, as it applies to so many aspects of the Writing Process. Our analysis must be ‘whole-brained’: even our paragraphs have to synthesise qualitative interpretation with quantitative, unambiguous supporting ‘information’. inspection

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The Three Steps of Analysis There are three main steps of analysis of qualitative data. These are:

1. Read through all the information: it’s often a struggle but this is the best place to start. Try to make sense of the information as it is, piece by piece. With each fact, ask yourself, ‘What does this mean?’

Your brain will struggle to comprehend the information. Significance and linkages will be hard to identify. Don’t worry – this ‘stretching’ stage is a little uncomfortable, just like an athlete may feel a little stiff at first. Remember, you are just warming up, familiarising yourself with the data.

2. Cluster the information: organise the facts, opinions, ideas and comments into similar categories. From interviews or FGDs these may be worries, suggestions, strengths, weaknesses, similar experiences or recommendations. Label the categories.

Again, you will struggle with this. The left side of the brain likes things neat and tidy, each idea in a little ‘box’: the right side insists on completeness and strives to identify connections. Some ideas fit neatly in the labeled box, but some comments present more problems. They seem to belong everywhere (i.e. in several of the boxes) – these are crosscutting themes or issues. Some seem to be ‘orphans’ – they don’t appear to belong in any other cluster until we better understand how the whole picture fits together. Although this stage does involve some compromise, it is important in helping us see the ‘shape’ of the information as a whole and allowing us to take some level of control over the information

3. Identify patterns, associations and relationships in the themes: are there similar concerns or opinions? How does information in one ‘box’ connect to information in another ‘box’? Very often these will be cause and effect. These linkages allow us to see how the information fits together as a whole – essential for us to fully understand and, as a result, be able to effectively explain to our readers.

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Extended Task This Case Study / Extended Assignment forms the core practical work of this programme, and we will return to it frequently. This will give you an opportunity to extend your knowledge beyond the frequent tasks, and develop a report from scratch that illustrates and reinforces all the ideas we are sharing with you.

Earlier in the module on Setting Objectives you selected methods to gather data on the children’s status in Nepal. We will be working with the data, starting with a fact sheet or raw, unprocessed ‘information’ and, through various stages, deepen our understanding and finally develop our plan.

In the next module you will turn your analysis into a plan for writing, and in Module Seven (‘Putting it all Together’) you will then follow the plan. At the end you will be happy to see the results – both in terms of ease of learning as well as in the quality of the report you produce. Believe us – thousands of people have done this before you, and there is nothing in a workshop setting that is missing here. (In fact, this programme is much more complete than any training.)

The data is real, and the fact sheet has not been edited in any way – this is exactly as the data reached us, directly from one Child Rights NGO. We did not manipulate the information in any way, to prove that this process can apply regardless of how hopeless the task seems at first.

In the next task you will be practising Step One, ‘Read through all the Information’. First, however, let’s remind ourselves of the scenario.

As a senior in-country staff of an international child rights NGO, you have been asked to develop a brief (2 – 3 page) report on the situation of children in Nepal. Ultimately, this document will be included in the fundraising prospectus which is distributed to the organisation’s strong funding base in the USA. The text may also be published in various development journals and the national press as part of your organisation’s advocacy work.

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Step One: Read through all the Information Based on a Desk Study and interview with various child rights experts, you have collected the following data:

Out of one hundred children:

• 49% are girls

• 51% are boys

• 93% live in the villages

• 7% live in cities

• 80% are immunised

• 56% are malnourished

• 40% belong to extremely poor families

• 70% are admitted to school, but only 53 complete primary level

• 79% of boys and 61% of girls are enrolled in primary level

• 52% of the total population are children below 18 years

• Only 71% of the population have access to potable water

• The total population is 24 million

• Every year about 779,000 babies are born

• Every year 78,000 children die

• Every day 206 children lose their life

• 45,000 children die of diarrhoea every year

• There is only one Children’s Hospital

• There is one child specialist to 102,671 children

• There are 23,885 primary schools

• 2.6 million children are engaged in different sectors of child labour

• Twice as many girls as boys in the 10 – 14 age group are at work

• At least 40,000 children are bonded labour

• 5000 children are living / working on the streets

• Every year 1500 pregnant mothers out of 100,000 die during childbirth

• Annually, 5000 – 7000 women are trafficked to neighbouring India.

• 34% of marriages involve children below 15 years of age

• Approximately 100 children are in adult prisons with their parents

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The first step of this task is very simple. Read through and familiarise yourself with the information. Read as many times as you like. There is no need to struggle to make sense of it right now. Just take it in. If you want to, you may even want to postpone the second step until tomorrow.

Take a piece of paper and write a few ‘conclusions’. What strikes you as significant? How would you answer if someone asked you about the children’s situation? There’s no right or wrong answer here. This is just the first step in the familiarisation process. After you have finished, compare with a colleague (if you are working through this programme with others), and then put those conclusions aside. You may use them later: and maybe you won’t.

The first step of this task is very simple. Read through and familiarise yourself with the information. Read as many times as you like. There is no need to struggle to make sense of it right now. Just take it in. If you want to, you may even want to postpone the second step until tomorrow.

Extended Task Now, get ready to get your brains working. You are going to work through the data line by line. (It will help if you cover the list with a piece of paper and focus on each piece of data individually.) Discuss with colleagues or note down your answer to the question:

What does this mean? Feel free to note down your thoughts and any questions you have.

Again, there is no right or wrong answer. It’s what the data means to you that counts. At the end of this process, it’s your conclusions you will be presenting in your report. As the expert, you have the responsibility and authority to explain the information to ‘speak on behalf of the facts’.

So, simply go through line by line and see what happens. We’ve started the process for you by noting our thoughts in the right-hand column of the worksheet below. Use the worksheet to add your own thoughts, ideas or key words.

FACTS THOUGHTS

49% are girls

51% are boys

OK, so there are more boys than girls. Not a big difference, though, in comparison to the global ratio for 0 – 15 years of age. So, it’s not really clear yet whether this is a difference or it’s just minor. Let’s wait and see …

93% live in the villages

7% live in cities

OK, this is pretty obvious. Most children live in villages. But what does that really mean in terms of their situation? Hmm, well, maybe they are less likely to get an education or other social services. More likely to have a traditional way of life also.

80% are immunised

I’m not sure about this. Is 80% good or bad? Maybe need to look at WHO web site or something … (later) well 80% isn’t all that good. Really, it has to be over 85% for widespread prevention of Early Childhood Diseases. On the other hand, look at where the children actually live. I think this is more of an achievement than a shortfall – even though 1 in 5 isn’t protected.

56% are malnourished OK, this is widespread and serious. If over half of children don’t get enough to eat …

40% belong to extremely poor families

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70% are admitted to school, but only 53 complete primary level

79% of boys and 61% of girls are enrolled in primary level

Only 71% of the population have access to potable water

52% of the total population are children below 18 years

The total population is 24 million

Every year about 779,000 babies are born

Every year 78,000 children die

Every day 206 children lose their life

45,000 children die of diarrhoea every year

There is only one Children’s Hospital

There is one child specialist to 102,671 children

There are 23,885 primary schools

2.6 million children are engaged in different sectors of child labour

Twice as many girls as boys in the 10 – 14 age group are at work

At least 40,000 children are bonded labour

5000 children are living / working on the streets

Every year 1500 pregnant mothers out of 100,000 die during childbirth

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Annually, 5000 – 7000 women are trafficked to neighbouring India.

34% of marriages involve children below 15 years of age

Approximately 100 children are in adult prisons with their parents

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Possible Solution Here are some of our thoughts as we worked through the data.

FACTS THOUGHTS

49% are girls

51% are boys

OK, so there are more boys than girls. Not a big difference, though, in comparison to the global ratio for 0 – 15 years of age. So, it’s not really clear yet whether this is a difference or it’s just minor. Let’s wait and see …


7% live in cities

OK, this is pretty obvious. Most children live in villages. But what does that really mean in terms of their situation? Hmm, well, maybe they are less likely to get an education or other social services. More likely to have a traditional way of life also.

80% are immunised

I’m not sure about this. Is 80% good or bad? Maybe need to look at WHO web site or something … (later) well 80% isn’t all that good. Really, it has to be over 85% for widespread prevention of Early Childhood Diseases. On the other hand, look at where the children actually live. I think this is more of an achievement than a shortfall – even though 1 in 5 isn’t protected.

56% are malnourished OK, this is widespread and serious. If over half of children don’t get enough to eat …

40% belong to extremely poor families This also looks like a widespread problem affecting children.

70% are admitted to school, but only 53% complete primary level

The enrolment rate isn’t really up there in the high numbers. Still, this is a mainly rural population, so access might be tricky. Perhaps that’s not so bad after all. Wow! But look at the completion rate. That’s something like half the population not finishing primary level.

Why don’t the other 30% even start? And why do they drop out? Is it poor quality of education, is it the parents’ attitudes or is it poverty? Who drops out more – boys or girls? Questions, questions …


OK, that is a very big difference. Boys are clearly favoured in education, girls are not. No real surprises there.


And here. Access to water doesn’t guarantee hygienic practices, but it is a precondition. No wonder diarrhoea kills so many.

52% of the total population are children below 18 years


That’s a lot of children. A young population, and not many of them in education, either. Looks like a social and economic accident waiting to happen …

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Got my calculator out, and it seems that’s over 10% child mortality. Looking at other countries’ rates, that is pretty high.


That is a big proportion of child death caused by diarrhoea – over half. That would make it the number one cause of child mortality. Serious.

There is only one Children’s Hospital

Well that is definitely not enough. And, of course, it’s going to be in the capital city. One children’s hospital and 12 million children … hmmm … doesn’t look like a case of ‘putting children first’ …


Same again. Not a good ratio, looks like half the population isn’t getting taken care of. I think we can see some more reasons for the high mortality here…


OK, time for the calculator again. Looks like a ratio of one primary school per 150 children. I wonder where those schools are – more likely to be in urban areas. Even if they are evenly distributed, can a rural school actually reach so many kids? Not sure if there are enough or if they are accessible enough … otherwise wouldn’t enrolment at primary level be higher than just 70%?

2.6 million children are engaged in different sectors of child labour

Well, once we exclude children too small to work, that’s a huge number. I wish we had more specific definitions here of ‘child’ and ‘labour’ – but that’s the constraint when we get secondary data. It may be faster, but we are limited to what we get. Even so, around ¼ of children are working, and that’s high.


OK, now we know where the girls go when the boys are at school … and who fetches the water


According to my dictionary, bonded labour is a form of slavery, where you have to work to pay off a family debt to a landowner. 40,000 is not a huge number, but that’s something that definitely shouldn’t be happening in this century.


OK, that’s not so large a number either, but street children are a serious issue. All children have the right to shelter and safety.


This doesn’t seem to fit here at all. I thought all this data was about children … wait – these mothers are probably children themselves, too immature to bear children safely.

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Annually, 5000 – 7000 women are trafficked to neighbouring India.

Like street children, trafficking is one of those high profile issues that get people’s attention. I assume by women we mean mainly young girls … serious stuff, even if the numbers aren’t so high. But, then again, how do we get accurate data about these hidden problems?


This is a shocker! First, because it’s so widespread: and secondly because it’s so serious. Looks like these remote areas are way behind the rest of the world on this. And my guess is it’s going to be the girl who is usually the younger partner.

Approximately 100 children are in adult prisons with their parents

Children growing up in prison? Serious stuff, even if it is just 100 children.

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Discussion That was certainly a tiring task, especially if you worked through it without a break. There was a lot of information to process (left brain), while the right hemisphere of the brain kept trying to put the pieces together. Note that occasionally we had to:

1. Calculate ratios;

2. Limit ourselves, in some cases, to accepting that our data was imperfect;

3. Ask ourselves questions;

4. Make assumptions; and

5. As we progressed through the data, started to link some of the facts together.

1 & 2 are what we call left-brain functions. The left hemisphere of the brain is dominant when dealing with facts and figures. When we exercise our right hemispheres – the ‘creative’ and ‘imaginative’ side of the brain – we get 3, 4 & 5, where we try to make ‘sense’ of the data coming in. We will occasionally refer to brain functions throughout this programme, for now we will let the picture below illustrate what we mean by ‘left’ and ‘right’ brain.

The upcoming steps are designed to help us involve our synthesising skills and spatial awareness more, involving our right hemispheres in the process of analysis.

This part of the task gives you an opportunity to practice Stage Two: Clustering the Data.

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Step Two: Clustering Don’t worry, things get easier. The last step was quite hard work: we are not easily capable of processing such a long list of information without some fatigue. Now we are going to start to get more involved with our data, by actually physically manipulating it and trying to bring some order. We call this stage clustering.

Extended Task

Find an open surface free of clutter (an empty desk, perhaps) and print out and cut up the task cards on the worksheet. Take a few minutes to play around with the cards, seeing which ones ‘belong’ together and which don’t. Try to bring some sense of order to the data by grouping them in any way that makes sense to you.

Discussion and Possible Solution

With the exercise you have just done (Clustering) you have tried to bring some sense of ‘order’ to the data. While this is a very useful tool when analysing our data, you may have noticed some issues such as:

While some things obviously belong in the same ‘box’, some things don’t seem to belong anywhere. For example, some things are most definitely ‘education’ or ‘health’. But what about ‘children in prison’? Where does that fit?

Some things seem to belong in more than one box. For example, ‘access to water’ seems to be ‘general’ information, but also seems closely related to health, especially the widespread Child Mortality due to diarrhoea. Deciding where to put these things can be difficult.

Some things seem to be general, and end up clustered together just because there are no other boxes – just as one desk drawer might be a place where we store everything that doesn’t fit anywhere else.

All the time we do this exercise our right brain is constantly trying to get involved, suggesting links and associations. However, the left-brain focus of this exercise can get frustrating. Don’t worry – we will look at how to synthesise the data after we have finished breaking it down.

First, here is a suggested initial order for the data. We will refine this a little later. (Although this is a ‘box thinking’ exercise, we have clustered the data visually, as with many of the concepts presented so far in this guide. We will further develop our visual understanding of the data in Step 3.)

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In this ‘solution’ we have one box of ‘general’ information – population, sex, location and basic needs. Notice we decided that ‘access to water’ belonged under general information – we felt that putting it in the ‘health’ box would mean it getting lost.

We have two boxes that were easy enough to complete – ‘health’ and ‘education’.

With the last two boxes we ran into some difficulties. There seems to be a lot about labour, but also a lot of other things, too. And we feel uncomfortable about putting street children in that box, too, even if they are at work; their situation is quite different from most child labourers.

The idea of a ‘gender bias’ box crossed our minds. But that would have really complicated the task, as we would have had to dip into all the other boxes – girl education, maternal mortality, girl labourers – to pull that together. (We will deal with gender bias as a cross-cutting issue later.)

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Our solution to this was to merge the two boxes and call this something like ‘Social Issues Affecting Children’ or ‘Rights’.

So, now we have 4 clusters:

• General Information (population, sex, location, basic needs)

• Children’s Education

• Children’s Health

• Children’s Rights

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Extended Task (Cont.) Now we are going to break the data down a little further. See if within each box you can find sub- groups of information. For example, the ‘Health’ box could be further subdivided into:

• Child mortality

• Causes of mortality

• Access to health services

Try to identify further sub-groups within the four clusters of data.

Possible Solution

In the suggested solution below, notice that:

• We have added sub-headings where necessary

• We have broken down the General section into two sub-groups to make the information clearer

• Under the heading ‘Health’ we have prioritised our sub-headings as Mortality (biggest indicator of health and development of a nation), Causes of Mortality, and, finally, Access to Health Services. Causes of Mortality have been ranked in order of size.

• Education has been similarly sub- classified using Order of Importance

• We now have five rights-related issues, and the sequence for these is from largest to smallest.

GENERAL

Demography


52% of the total population is children below 18 years

49% are girls

51% are boys


7% live in cities

Basic Needs

56% are malnourished

40% belong to extremely poor families


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HEALTH

Mortality




Causes of Child Mortality


80% are immunised


Access to Health Services

There is only one children’s hospital


EDUCATION

Access


Enrol / Complete

70% are admitted to school, but only 53 complete primary level

Gender Disparity


RIGHTS

Labour 2.6 million children are engaged in different sectors of child labour



Early Marriage


Trafficking

Annually, 5000 – 7000 women are trafficked to neighbouring India

Homeless / Street Children


Imprisonment Approximately 100 children are in adult prisons with their parents

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Widespread or Serious? Dimensions of a Problem It is worth stopping a moment to consider how we can decide Order of Importance. After all, just because something affects a lot of people doesn’t necessarily make it more important than something which affects a minority. A flu epidemic can affect a lot of the population, but can we say that influenza is more serious than HIV?

You can use a simple matrix for plotting problems. Each problem has two aspects. One is the scale of the problem: exactly how widespread is it? How many people are affected? The other is the depth of the problem: how serious is it in terms of its impact on the people affected?

Here’s the matrix, followed by a task.

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Extended Task

Review the data on Children in Nepal and, wherever you can, plot the problems on the matrix below.

There is no suggested solution for this task, as some responses will necessarily be subjective.

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Interim Summary At this point let’s pause and reflect on the steps we have covered so far.

We began with a list that made very little sense. Certainly, some ideas were quite obvious from reading through, but getting this real picture was still quite difficult.

By working through the data, item by item, we started to get a better understanding. We started to notice associations and links, and ask ourselves questions. Some conclusions were starting to form.

Clustering the data gave us an opportunity to take some control over the information. By experimenting with different ways to order the information we started to see how the ‘big picture’ might fit together. However, there were some times when some information just didn’t fit anywhere, while some information seemed relevant to everything. However, by this point we were starting to see a structure where we could hang our ideas.

Further refining the data gave us even more control, as within the main areas of Health, Education and Rights we could see a sequence for presenting our ideas.

The Problem Matrix gave us an opportunity to look at the problems from a different perspective, and we could see from how they are clustered that the situation of Nepalese children is pretty poor.

At this point, you would actually be ready to write a pretty good report. However, it would not yet be an excellent report. Remember in Module One we identified the responsibilities of a reporter being to:

• Investigate

• Analyse

• Understand

• Describe

• Explain

We could certainly describe the situation based on the work we have done so far. However, we need to further analyse if we are to fully understand the situation, and if we are going to be able to explain the true ‘picture’ to our reader then we need to get our right brain more involved.

So far we have been using mainly traditional methods of critical thinking. In the next section we are going to look at Mind Mapping. We will use the Mind Mapping tool for Step Three: Identifying Patterns, Associations and Relationships.

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tools. Any trainer with good people management skils can facilitate this straightforward programme. There are over 250 PowerPoint slides, broken down into the eight thematic modules of the programme, providing powerful visual support to the learning activities and discussion. Participant handouts are ready to print, and ordering a Licence + Training Pack means all your team will have access to the full Handbook and CD for reference and self-study. Included also are supplementary materials - daily feedback forms, evaluation form, cut-up tasks and colour graphs for data analysis, and a model report based on the case study central to the course.

This training has been successfully conducted by ELD since 2002, benefiting 1000s of development professionals from a wide range of organisations, backgrounds and nationalities. There are many reports at the ELD website to show you how the training works in practice. Let your organisation benefit from our experience with the latest version of this powerful but simple course by ordering the Trainer Edition.


About ELD Education, Language and Development Training Programmes provides practical training and consultancy services to development organisations in South and South-East Asia. Registered as a charity in the United Kingdom, but based in Kathmandu, Nepal and Bangkok, Thailand, ELD conducts regular open training workshops in areas such as Reporting Skills Project Proposal Writing and PM&E, as well as a range of in-house assignments which include training, planning, proposal development, teambuilding, project close-out and outplacement. ELD was founded in 2000 'to enhance the skills of people working in education, sustainable development and human rights using the most appropriate technologies and methodologies'. ELD's objectives are based on extensive research. Between 1997 and 1999 we explored the communication and project management challenges faced by projects and development organisations. Since then we have continued to develop our programmes and responses based on our extensive experience delivering services in South Asia (since 2000) and South-East Asia (since 2003).

About the Author Neil Kendrick has directed UK charity Education, Language and Development Training Programmes since it was founded in 2000, and was responsible for setting up ELD's Nepal and Thailand operations. An experienced evaluator, facilitator and trainer specialising in Development Communication, Neil has worked with development sector participants for more than 10 years. He has trained thousands of professionals at all levels throughout South and South-East Asia in Reporting Skills, Professional Writing, Project Planning and Proposal Writing. Prior to ELD, Neil spent several years with the British Council at Istanbul, Bangkok, Hong Kong and Kathmandu.

Participants describe his training approach as relaxed and well- informed, and regularly mention his ability to demystify learning through easy explanation and examples. That same style has been brought to this Handbook, getting complex points and sophisticated tools across in a no-nonsense, easy to grasp way.

Who’s using the Handbook? The flexibilty and relevance of this programme is clear from the range of organisations that use it. These include: Asian Development Bank Diakonia UNAIDS ADRA European Centre for Development

Policy Management UNDP

Asian Institute of Technology UNECA Baptist World Aid Family Health International UNEP Belgian Technical Cooperation GTZ UNICEF Bielefeld University International Institute for

Development Studies UNOPS

Bioversity International USAID Birmingham University International Atomic Energy Authority WFP Burnet Institute Medecines Sans Frontiers World Agroforestry Centre CABI Overseas Development Institute World Health Organisation Capacity Building Initiative PATH World Wildlife Fund for Nature

Conservation CARE Save the Children UK CGIAR Save the Children USA Concern Worldwide Swiss Development Coperation


How to Order For Individuals

GBP Buy

Online Pay by

Bank Draft

Single-user Licence: PDF Handbook (download only) £20

PDF Handbook / CDROM (includes FREE immediate download of Handbook)

£40

For Organisations

All organisation licences include free immediate download of PDF Handbook plus one master CDROM by mail. Licence type indicates number of copies which may be distributed electronically / number of PCs on which CDROM can be copied.

The Trainer Edition has all the contents and benefits of the Standard Edition PLUS a Training Pack comprising of Trainer Guide, PowerPoint slides, Participant Notes and Supplementary Materials.

Licence Type Rate per User

Total GBP

Buy Online

Pay by Bank Draft

10-user licence (Standard Edition) £30 £300

10-user licence (Trainer Edition) - £500

25-user licence (Standard Edition) £24 £600

25-user licence (Trainer Edition) - £750

50-user licence Trainer Edition (Training Pack included FREE)

£18 £900

Prices for all CDs include free shipping worldwide.

Organisations that wish to purchase licences may also pay directly by bank draft to our bank in Bangkok, Thailand. See www.reportingskills.org/order.htm for details or contact [email protected].

Education, Language and Development Training Programmes Registered United Kingdom Charity no. 1083385

84, Queensway Winsford Cheshire

CW7 1BN United Kingdom

26

http://www.reportingskills.org/order.htm

mailto:[email protected]

Analyzing and Interpreting Information

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Transcript of Analyzing and Interpreting Information