Assignment 5 (Pei Zhao)
Data Analysis Approach
Pei Zhao
Abstract:
As a process which could transform, remodel and revise data with a view to research a
conclusion for a given situation, data analysis has an important role in a study or a
project. Without any data and effective data analysis result, a project will have no
meanings and values. As for education research, qualitative and quantitative research
methods are the main ways. But how to collect useful data and analyze data in a right
way are the main questions that every researcher needs to deal with. In this paper, the
data collection and analysis approaches in my master thesis and PhD thesis in the future
will be explained in detailed.
Introduction:
Levine, J. (1996) defined data analysis is a body of methods that help to describe facts,
detect patterns, develop explanations, and test hypothesis. Data analysis is very
important, because it is used in all of the sciences, business, administration and policy
as well. In order to effectively analyze data, every researchers need to have valuable
data and right data analysis approach. Thus, the ways to collect data and approaches of
data analysis will be discusses deeply in the paper.
Research methods in education (and the other social sciences) are often divided into
two main types: quantitative and qualitative methods. In my project, there are two main
parts—media research and educational research. Considering their own features, I
would like to use the combination of quantitative and qualitative data analysis
approaches in my project. Graneheim & Lundman (2003) stated that quantitative
approach is often used in media research, and qualitative content analysis has been
applied in education research. The project would like to use the combination of
quantitative approach and qualitative analysis. In the paper, quantitative and qualitative
data collection and analysis would like to be deeply illustrated and the reasons why I
choose them in my project will also be showed.
Quantitative Data Collection and Analysis:
In the definition from Aliaga and Gunderson (2000): Quantitative research is
‘Explaining phenomena by collecting numerical data that are analyzed using
mathematically based methods’.
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Assignment 5 (Pei Zhao)
As for users’ satisfactory on computer system and interface, standard questionnaires are
main ways to collect this kind of data. There are four standard questionnaire:
Questionnaire For User Interaction Satisfaction (QUIS), Computer Science Usability
Questionnaire (CSUQ), Perceived Usefulness and Ease of Use (PUEU), and Purdue
Usability Testing Questionnaire (PUTQ). Among them, QUIS which is designed by
University of Maryland Human – Computer Interaction Lab and CSUQ which is
designed by IBM, are two forms I always to use. With these forms, I could get the data
about uses’ satisfactory and feedback on the interface and computer systems.
Statistical Package for Social Scientists (SPSS) is the main tool which I use to analyze
the quantitative data. It is a very powerful statistical package, excellent for undertaking
and cross-sectional analysis. It can also be sued for time series analysis. SPSS is one of
the top data analysis tools. Perner (1990) stated that the process of analyzing data via
SPSS covers: coding data; writing an SPSS program; entering the program and data
exercise; checking data and program for errors; and using statistical procedures and
computation. With years’ development, IBM gave us a package which is more
convenient. The biggest benefit of quantitative data analysis in SPSS is SPSS could
help researchers to understand the inferential statistics, including their cross tabulation
and correlation. In my opinion, SPSS is a best tool to mine data and get the analysis
result in amount of data.
Sharon at the University of Essex pointed out that the procedure in SPSS includes:
generating descriptive statistics; generating a data dictionary; making use of the
descriptive and data dictionary output; generating frequencies; display labels; weighted
studies; identifying cases with anomalous values; identifying none integer values; and
printing the output. Bryman & Cramer (2012) studied that data analysis in SPSS should
also consider combining logical relations; recoding the values of variables; and
computing a new variable. These steps would help data analysis more logical and
scientific.
Qualitative Data Collection and Analysis:
Marshall (2006) concluded that qualitative research typically rely on four methods for
gathering information:




Participating in the setting,
Observing directly,
Interviewing in depth
Analyzing documents and material culture.
In my project, including the previous studies, all of them would like to be used, because
I believe they could help me collect the comprehensive data and get the useful result.
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Assignment 5 (Pei Zhao)
Considering qualitative data analysis, content analysis is the preferred one which is
used in my project. The ways of qualitative data collection cover interview,
questionnaire and observation. We will study the content analysis I these three field in
the following part.
Firstly, qualitative content analysis of interview aims to describe every stages and
targets in the diabetes. Lundman & Norberg (1993) studied that the unit of analysis is
interview text about experiences of having hypoglycemia, and the context consists of a
larger study aimed at describing coping strategies related to the everyday strains of
living with diabetes. Graneheim & Lundman (2003) pointed out the key point of data
analysis in interview is to compare the differences and similaritites among the various
codes and sort them into different sub-categories or categories, which has been
identified before and help to make a manifest content.
Secondly, the data in observation is from notes and dialogues. As for the context in
observations, Graneheim et al. (2001) stated that it aims to illuminate the behaviors.
And they call it ‘behavioral disturbances’. In order to analyze the qualitative data in
observation, the first step is to divide the observational notes and dialogues into several
meaning units. It would effectively help us get the result from these data.
Thirdly, questionnaire or survey will be used to collect enough data from amount of
subjects. Even though the number in questionnaire is bigger than that in interview, the
scale is not big enough with the questionnaire in quantitative approach. When the
sample is defined, Elo & Kynagas (2007) studied the process: selecting the unit of
analysis, making sense of the data and the whole, open coding, coding sheets, grouping,
categorization and abstraction in inductive research; develop structured analysis
matrices, data coding according the categories and hypothesis testing correspondence
comparison to earlier studies etc. in deductive research. I would like to use the latter
one in my project.
Conclusion:
In order to get more scientific result, every project needs to collect and analyze data. In
my master thesis, combination of qualitative and quantitative data collection and
analysis approach had been used. But the quantitative one is the main approach and the
qualitative one is the supporter. In my PhD project, the combination is the way of data
collection and analysis as well. But the qualitative one will be main and quantitative
will be supporting.
In qualitative data collection, interview, observation and questionnaire will be used. As
for these data analysis, content analysis will be the one I prefer to use. In the study result
from Elo and Kynagas, the process of deductive research will guide the qualitative data
analysis in my project. In quantitative data collection, users’ satisfactory standard
questionnaire is the main way, and in my master project, I chose QUIS to collect data,
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Assignment 5 (Pei Zhao)
and used SPSS to analyze the data to understand the inter-relationship among data. In
my PhD project, SPSS will be the main tool to analyze quantitative data, but CSUQ
will be the questionnaire which is used to collect the data, because it is more related to
my project.
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Assignment 5 (Pei Zhao)
Reference:
Aliaga, M., & Gunderson, B. (2000). Interactive Statistics. Saddle River, p3-15
Elo, S. & Kynagas, H. (2008). The qualitative content analysis process.Journal of
Advanced Nursing. 62 (1), p107-115.
Graneheim, U. & Lundman, B. (2004). Qualitative content analysis in nursing research:
concepts, procedures and measures to achieve trustworthiness. Nurse Education Today.
24 (3), p105-112.
Graneheim, U.H., Norberg, A., Jansson, L., (2001). Interaction relating to privacy,
identity, autonomy and security. An observational study focusing on a women with
dementia and ‘behavioural disturbances’, and on her care providers. Journal of
Advanced Nursing 36 (2), p256–265.
Levine, J. (1996). Inroduction to Data Analysis: The Rules of Evidence. Available:
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~mss/data%20analysis/Volume%20I%20pdf%20/006%20I
ntro%20(What%20is%20the%20weal.pdf. Last accessed 7th May 2013.
Marshall . (2006). Data Collection Methods.
Available: http://www.sagepub.com/upm-data/10985_Chapter_4.pdf. Last accessed
7th May 2013.
Perner, L. (1990). Using SPSS/PC+ To Analyze Research Data. Available:
http://www.larsperner.com/pdf/USINGSPSS.PDF. Last accessed 7th May 2013.
Sharon, B. (2012). Quantitative Data Processing Procedures. Available: http://dataarchive.ac.uk/media/54770/ukda081-ds-quantitativedataprocessingprocedures.pdf.
Last accessed 7th May 2013.
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