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DATA SCIENCE
 Your Guide to Qualitative and Quantitative Data
Analysis Methods
B Y   M A N U B H A T I A    SEPTEMBER 5, 2018  7 M I N S R E A D

What is the first thing that comes to mind when we see data? The first instinct
is to find patterns, connections, and relationships. We look at the data to find
meaning in it.

Similarly, in research, once data is collected, the next step is to get insights
from it. For example, if a clothing brand is trying to identify the latest trends
among young women, the brand will first reach out to young women and ask
them questions relevant to the research objective. After collecting this
information, the brand will analyze that data to identify patterns — for
example, it may discover that most young women would like to see more
variety of jeans.

Data analysis is how researchers go from a mass of data to meaningful

insights. There are many different data analysis methods, depending on the
type of research. Here are a few methods you can use to analyze quantitative
and qualitative data.

It’s difficult to analyze bad data. Make sure you’re collecting high-quality data with
our blog “4 Data Collection Techniques: Which One’s Right for You?”.
Analyzing Quantitative Data
Data Preparation
The first stage of analyzing data is data preparation, where the aim is to
convert raw data into something meaningful and readable. It includes four
steps:

Step 1: Data Validation

The purpose of data validation is to find out, as far as possible, whether the
data collection was done as per the pre-set standards and without any bias. It
is a four-step process, which includes…

 Fraud, to infer whether each respondent was actually interviewed or

not.
 Screening, to make sure that respondents were chosen as per the
research criteria.
  Procedure, to check whether the data collection procedure was duly
followed.
 Completeness, to ensure that the interviewer asked the respondent all
the questions, rather than just a few required ones.
To do this, researchers would need to pick a random sample of completed
surveys and validate the collected data. (Note that this can be time-consuming
for surveys with lots of responses.) For example, imagine a survey with 200
respondents split into 2 cities. The researcher can pick a sample of 20 random
respondents from each city. After this, the researcher can reach out to them
through email or phone and check their responses to a certain set of
questions.

Check out 18 data validations that will prevent bad data from slipping into your data
set in the first place.

Step 2: Data Editing

Typically, large data sets include errors. For example, respondents may fill
fields incorrectly or skip them accidentally. To make sure that there are no
such errors, the researcher should conduct basic data checks, check for outliers,
and edit the raw research data to identify and clear out any data points that
may hamper the accuracy of the results.
For example, an error could be fields that were left empty by respondents.
While editing the data, it is important to make sure to remove or fill all the
empty fields. (Here are 4 methods to deal with missing data.)
Step 3: Data Coding
This is one of the most important steps in data preparation. It refers to
grouping and assigning values to responses from the survey.

For example, if a researcher has interviewed 1,000 people and now wants to
find the average age of the respondents, the researcher will create age
buckets and categorize the age of each of the respondent as per these codes.
(For example, respondents between 13-15 years old would have their age
coded as 0, 16-18 as 1, 18-20 as 2, etc.)

Then during analysis, the researcher can deal with simplified age brackets,
rather than a massive range of individual ages.

Quantitative Data Analysis Methods

After these steps, the data is ready for analysis. The two most commonly used
quantitative data analysis methods are descriptive statistics and inferential
statistics.
Descriptive Statistics
Typically descriptive statistics (also known as descriptive analysis) is the first
level of analysis. It helps researchers summarize the data and find patterns. A
few commonly used descriptive statistics are:

 Mean: numerical average of a set of values.

 Median: midpoint of a set of numerical values.
 Mode: most common value among a set of values.
 Percentage: used to express how a value or group of respondents within
the data relates to a larger group of respondents.
 Frequency: the number of times a value is found.
 Range: the highest and lowest value in a set of values.
Descriptive statistics provide absolute numbers. However, they do not explain
the rationale or reasoning behind those numbers. Before applying descriptive
statistics, it’s important to think about which one is best suited for your
research question and what you want to show. For example, a percentage is a
good way to show the gender distribution of respondents.

Descriptive statistics are most helpful when the research is limited to the
sample and does not need to be generalized to a larger population. For
example, if you are comparing the percentage of children vaccinated in two
different villages, then descriptive statistics is enough.

Since descriptive analysis is mostly used for analyzing single variable, it is

often called univariate analysis.

Analyzing Qualitative Data

Qualitative data analysis works a little differently from quantitative data,
primarily because qualitative data is made up of words, observations, images,
and even symbols. Deriving absolute meaning from such data is nearly
impossible; hence, it is mostly used for exploratory research. While in
quantitative research there is a clear distinction between the data preparation
and data analysis stage, analysis for qualitative research often begins as soon
as the data is available.

Data Preparation and Basic Data Analysis

Analysis and preparation happen in parallel and include the following steps:
 1. Getting familiar with the data: Since most qualitative data is just words,
the researcher should start by reading the data several times to get
familiar with it and start looking for basic observations or patterns. This
also includes transcribing the data.
2. Revisiting research objectives: Here, the researcher revisits the research
objective and identifies the questions that can be answered through the
collected data.
3. Developing a framework: Also known as coding or indexing, here the
researcher identifies broad ideas, concepts, behaviors, or phrases and
assigns codes to them. For example, coding age, gender, socio-economic
status, and even concepts such as the positive or negative response to a
question. Coding is helpful in structuring and labeling the data.
4. Identifying patterns and connections: Once the data is coded, the
research can start identifying themes, looking for the most common
responses to questions, identifying data or patterns that can answer
research questions, and finding areas that can be explored further.

Qualitative Data Analysis Methods

Several methods are available to analyze qualitative data. The most
commonly used data analysis methods are:

 Content analysis: This is one of the most common methods to analyze

qualitative data. It is used to analyze documented information in the form
of texts, media, or even physical items. When to use this method depends
on the research questions. Content analysis is usually used to analyze
responses from interviewees.
 Narrative analysis: This method is used to analyze content from various
sources, such as interviews of respondents, observations from the field,
or surveys. It focuses on using the stories and experiences shared by
people to answer the research questions.
 Discourse analysis: Like narrative analysis, discourse analysis is used to
analyze interactions with people. However, it focuses on analyzing the
social context in which the communication between the researcher and
the respondent occurred. Discourse analysis also looks at the
respondent’s day-to-day environment and uses that information during
analysis.
 Grounded theory: This refers to using qualitative data to explain why a
certain phenomenon happened. It does this by studying a variety of
similar cases in different settings and using the data to derive causal
explanations. Researchers may alter the explanations or create new ones
as they study more cases until they arrive at an explanation that fits all
cases.
These methods are the ones used most commonly. However, other data
analysis methods, such as conversational analysis, are also available.
Data analysis is perhaps the most important component of research. Weak
analysis produces inaccurate results that not only hamper the authenticity of
the research but also make the findings unusable. It’s imperative to choose
your data analysis methods carefully to ensure that your findings are insightful
and actionable.

Header photo by Brittany Colette on Unsplash

Manu Bhatia
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55 Comments

1.

Gebreamlak2 YEARS AGOREPLY

Many Thanks and the documents are so intersting .

2.

Kenneth2 YEARS AGOREPLY

Interesting read!

Luke de Castro1 YEAR AGOREPLY

Thank you Kenneth!
3.

Tricia Sese2 YEARS AGOREPLY

Thank you so much for these information, helps me to understand more.

4.

Blessing1 YEAR AGOREPLY

This is very insightful but permit me to ask, is it possible to use both quantitative and qualitative analysis
because I am looking at Women’s Perception on Gender Participation in Politics . There would be
interviews and questionnaires. With this article, I will be using descriptive statistics to analyze age,
socioeconomic status, will also use correlation to find of educated and uneducated women’s perception to
politics and will likely interview some women on their views on politics generally.

5.

vandana1 YEAR AGOREPLY

very nice…thanks for such an informative post.

6.

pani1 YEAR AGOREPLY

well explained with apt examples. easy to unerstand

7.
 Daniel1 YEAR AGOREPLY

Who wrote this article?

Christine Garcia1 YEAR AGOREPLY

Hey Daniel, this blog was written by Manu Bhatia. Her name is at the bottom of the blog (above these
comments).

8.

Lwabaga Arafat1 YEAR AGOREPLY

I have liked this work and keep the spirit of carrying out research

9.

Henry Ndlovu1 YEAR AGOREPLY

Thanks so much for sharing this informative study document on data analysis.

10.

Ronnie mae david1 YEAR AGOREPLY

How to make data analysis is quali quanti research? I only have 27 respondents and distribute an close and
open-ended questionnaires and also interviewed some professionals because our topic was ‘AutoCad
 training as part of the senior high school curriculum’ and after analyzing the data, our teacher said that it
was weak and we need to make it a quali quanti research, now im depresed. Anyone can help?!

11.

Siti Huzaifah1 YEAR AGOREPLY

Tks a lot, interesting information. It helps me to choose a type of data analysis for my research.

12.

Ebenezer1 YEAR AGOREPLY

This Information is very useful. Thanks

13.

Long Manalo1 YEAR AGOREPLY

Thank you very much for this article. Can I use this in my lecture notes? How am I going to cite you as the
source>

Thanks!

Christine Garcia1 YEAR AGOREPLY

Hey Long, thanks for the note. Of course you can use this in your lecture notes. Feel free to cite it however
you like — please just include a link to this blog and the author.
o

Ekram1 YEAR AGOREPLY

Hey Mr. or Ms. Manalo. I was wondering how you cited this article as. I was writing my thesis and wanted
to use some contents from here. And i got confused how to site it. Please let me know how you did it. As it
may give me an idea how.
Thanks!

14.

Richard1 YEAR AGOREPLY

Very simple for me to understand and use.Thanks

15.

Elizabeth Ebot1 YEAR AGOREPLY

Hello,

Thanks very much for this piece of write-up. It is very explicit and precise.
It has been very helpful and has guided me towards choosing the right
data analysis method to use for my thesis.

16.

Anh Nguyen1 YEAR AGOREPLY

Thank you so much. It is easy to understand. It’s well-structured and has good visual description. Well
done.
17.

Qualitative Data vs. Quantitative Data: A Marketers’ Guide1 YEAR AGOREPLY

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18.

Top 10 Growth Hacking Strategies For Small Businesses1 YEAR AGOREPLY

[…] of your time, energy, and money. Nevertheless, you need some of these big data analysis tools and
these data analysis techniques to stand your […]

19.

Maggie1 YEAR AGOREPLY

This is straight to the point. I appreciate.

20.

Eusabia1 YEAR AGOREPLY

I was stuck on how to anaylse each of my objectives until I saw this post. Thank you for making it easy to
understand and relate to relevant examples.

21.
 PATRICK KAMAU1 YEAR AGOREPLY

GOOD JOB BUT HOW DOES ONE MAKE REFERENCE TO YOUR BOOKS?

22.

Michael1 YEAR AGOREPLY

Well done

23.

Wahab1 YEAR AGOREPLY

Why noting about thematic analyzing data method?

Kombo1 MONTH AGOREPLY

Thematic analysis is applied on Qualitative data

24.

Jei J. Langkuk1 YEAR AGOREPLY

very explicit work. thanks Manu.

25.

Penyediaan Data dan Analisis Data Asas | Pascasiswazah 1 2 MONTHS AGOREPLY

[…] SUMBER: SOCIALCOPS.COM […]

26.

Hassan Yusuf1 2 MONTHS AGOREPLY

Very enlightening

27.

Sanjeev Tyagi1 2 MONTHS AGOREPLY

Very simple explanation of a tough topic. Thanks , found it quite useful

28.

shibin ap1 2 MONTHS AGOREPLY

simple and interesting thanks for the information.

29.

Usman salisu1 1 MONTHS AGOREPLY

 Thank you for sharing knowledge, please how do i make analysis of my data because i have both primary
data from field survey using both interview of close ended and open ended questions
30. Pingback: How to Validate User Needs with Customer Validation – Digital Natives – Blog

31.

Okubasu Tete1 0 MONTHS AGOREPLY

Much appreciation for the information, and how it has been simplified. Thanks for your dedication and
effort

32.

Bogale mosissa9 MONTHS AGOREPLY

Really it is a good explanation thank you

33.

Olusola Osibote9 MONTHS AGOREPLY

Thank you so much. This just gave me a push.

34.

Kamal9 MONTHS AGOREPLY

This is more direct and clear explanation, thanks

35.
 Charles K. Mainoo8 MONTHS AGOREPLY

I really loved this write up. It has clearly shown the difference between qualitative and quantitative
analysis.

Very grateful to the writer.

Charles K. Mainoo

Ayswarrya G8 MONTHS AGOREPLY

Glad that you liked this resource, Charles.

36.

Lucy8 MONTHS AGOREPLY

Thank you!

37.

charles umeh8 MONTHS AGOREPLY

interesting write up. thank you. It makes Analysis methods very easy to understand. well done..

dr Charles. U

38.
 Saif Al abdul Salam7 MONTHS AGOREPLY

Thanks a lot..
It was very helpful to me

39.

Alexis Co5 MONTHS AGOREPLY

This is very helpful and informative. Thank you and more power.

40.

Krystel5 MONTHS AGOREPLY

Do you have sample of pure qualitative research?

Please send me… I cannot visualize how it must be written.

41.

Rebecca Kabwos3 MONTHS AGOREPLY

This information is clear and precise. It relieved the headache i had while trying to analyze data for my
study. Thank you so much for this informative work
42. Pingback: How to Validate User Needs with Customer Validation - Digital Natives

43.

Surafiel Kibreab Amharay1 MONTH AGOREPLY

Thanks, Very helpful article

44.

Kombo1 MONTH AGOREPLY

Well articulated. Thanks

45.

Michelle1 MONTH AGOREPLY

This was very useful. Thank you

46.
Cynthia Nwabia3 WEEKS AGOREPLY
Kudos!
This is very articulated with elucidate understanding of the various types of analysis. The break down is
awesome, it really helped me. I wish I saw it much earlier. It s very clear and direct to the point unlike
other articles that spent too much time writing jargon that end up confusing people. Thanks. Please write
more on Research findings and outcome, theoretical underpinning or research problem, etc.
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