Data Analysis

1. Conducting your
research: data analysis
DISSERTATION AND PRACTICE AS RESEARCH
Week
9
Dissertation
and
Practice
as
Research

2. Collecting data recap
 Remember your research question
 Keep careful notes of when, where and for what reason you collected
what data and how you collected it
 Keep notes of your responses, the problems and surprises of all research
activities
 Label/code/number up questionnaires
 Label all videos/observation notes
 Note and file all reading references
Week 9
Dissertation and Practice as Research

3. Preparing and entering your data
 Questionnaires
 Pre-code or categorise closed questionnaire questions
 Code any names for data protection
 Read carefully and code up less structured, more open-ended questions
 Analyse questionnaires in batches
 Are you looking at simple responses or comparing across responses for patterns
of relationships?
Week 9
Dissertation and Practice as Research

4. Preparing and entering your data
 Interviews/Observations/Journals
 Type up or transcribe tapes as you go
 Read it all through , yourself – where you can start to spot themes, trends,
categories and new ideas
 Keep copies/back up on disk/ memory stick and label
 Be open to any surprises
 Consider all your data – what themes and issues emerge? What is unexpected?
What is as expected? What else?
 Select what relates to your questions – there will be some data which is
fascinating but irrelevant to this piece of research.
Week 9
Dissertation and Practice as Research

5. Quantitative Data
 Calculations
 Averages, percentages
 E.g. 80% of the actors surveyed reported
that…
 E.g. Dancers participated in extra curricular
dance classes for an average of 3.4 hours
per week
 Interpretation
 You have never ‘proved’ anything!
 Be aware of self-selection bias
 Be careful of assuming causality
Week 9
Dissertation and Practice as Research

6. Quantitative Research: Reporting
Results
 Results
 Tables
 Graphs
 Percentages
 Words
 Don’t report results in more than one format!
Week 9
Dissertation and Practice as Research

7. Qualitative Data
 Gather together the data from the different sources
 Read through, annotate and see if and where patterns start to emerge
 Colour or number code the patterns and gather the data into groups in
terms of the colour of number codes
 Codes might include:
 Key concepts
 Theoretical ideas
 Key variables identified in the literature
 Emergent themes from the data
Week 9
Dissertation and Practice as Research

8. Qualitative Data
 Theme analysis
 E.g. Q: can you describe your performance anxiety symptoms?
 A: “Yeah sure. Let me think. I get butterflies in my stomach, I
yawn a lot actually when I’m going to the stage, and I get
sweaty palms. And then you get obviously the anxiety of, you
know, in your head, sometimes, it has happened to me and I
have to control it, sometimes I get ahead of myself when I’m on
stage, my brain doesn’t stop thinking. I think that’s everything.
I’m not sure. Sometimes it all happens at once.”
Week 9
Dissertation and Practice as Research

9. Qualitative Data
 Theme Analysis
 E.g. Q: can you describe your performance anxiety symptoms?
 A: “Yeah sure. Let me think. I get butterflies in my stomach, I
yawn a lot actually when I’m going to the stage, and I get
sweaty palms. And then you get obviously the anxiety of, you
know, in your head, sometimes, it has happened to me and I
have to control it, sometimes I get ahead of myself when I’m on
stage, my brain doesn’t stop thinking. I think that’s everything.
I’m not sure. Sometimes it all happens at once.”
Week 9
Dissertation and Practice as Research

10. Qualitative Research
 Interpretation
 You have never ‘proved’ anything!
 Be aware of your own biases when interpreting others’ words
 Be careful of over-interpreting finding
 Reporting results
 Use detailed description
 Illustrate key points, themes or ideas with quotes
 Some qualitative researchers create diagrams of their categories and themes
Week 9
Dissertation and Practice as Research

11. Critical Analysis
 Constructivism
 The constructivist world-view suggests that there isn't
a single truth/theory, rather all truths/theories are
relative and are constructed by individuals or by
society. Constructivism is a process of discovery
rather than confirmation; that is, you have data and
you attempt to extract theory from it
Week 9
Dissertation and Practice as Research

12. Critical Analysis
 Assessing quality
 Validity – bias is an issue in critical analysis research around the
role of the researcher – you should use theoretical approaches
to support your interpretations
 Reliability – How reliable are your sources? Are they
academically rigorous?
 Generalisability – can the finding be applied more broadly or in
different contexts, or are they specific to the work/practitioner
studied?
Week 9
Dissertation and Practice as Research

13. Critical Analysis
 Reporting results
 Descriptive: a descriptive account of the data i.e. this is what
was said, but no comments or theories as to why or how.
 Interpretative: a more interpretive analysis that is concerned
with the response as well as what may have been inferred or
implied.
 Critical: a very high level of critical interrogation characterised
by sustained critique of content/subject that goes beyond
what is inferred or implied in theory and practice, to offering a
thoughtfully imaginative criticism and/or (re-) reading.
Week 9
Dissertation and Practice as Research

14. Practice as research
 What are your criteria for assessing your
success?
 What outcome do you want to achieve –
goals?
 Demonstrating key stylistic features?
 Apply theoretical framework?
 Outcomes
 Embodied knowledge
 Demonstration
 Performance
Week 9
Dissertation and Practice as Research