Data Analysis 

is the process of systematically applying statistical and/or logical techniques to describe and illustrate,
condense and recap, and evaluate data. According to Shamoo and Resnik (2003) various analytic procedures
“provide a way of drawing inductive inferences from data and distinguishing the signal (the phenomenon of interest)
from the noise (statistical fluctuations) present in the data”..

What is Data Analysis? Research, Types

& Example
ByDaniel JohnsonUpdatedNovember 19, 2022

What is Data Analysis?

Data analysis is defined as a process of cleaning, transforming, and
modeling data to discover useful information for business decision-making.
The purpose of Data Analysis is to extract useful information from data and
taking the decision based upon the data analysis.
A simple example of Data analysis is whenever we take any decision in our
day-to-day life is by thinking about what happened last time or what will
happen by choosing that particular decision. This is nothing but analyzing our
past or future and making decisions based on it. For that, we gather memories
of our past or dreams of our future. So that is nothing but data analysis. Now
same thing analyst does for business purposes, is called Data Analysis.

Quantitative data analysis is one of those things that often strikes

fear in students. It’s totally understandable – quantitative analysis is
a complex topic, full of confusing lingo, like medians, modes,
correlation and regression. Suddenly we’re all wishing we’d paid
a little more attention in math class…
The good news is that while quantitative data analysis is a huge topic,
gaining a working understanding of the basics isn’t that hard, even
for those of us who avoid numbers and math. In this presentation
we’ll break quantitative analysis down into simple, bite-sized
chunks so you can approach your research with confidence.

What is quantitative data analysis?

Despite being a mouthful, quantitative data analysis simply
means analysing data that is numbers-based – or data that can
be easily “converted” into numbers without losing any meaning.
For example, category-based variables like gender, ethnicity, or native
language could all be “converted” into numbers without losing
meaning – for example, English could equal 1, French 2, etc.
This contrasts against qualitative data analysis, where the focus is on
words, phrases and expressions that can’t be reduced to numbers.
 What is quantitative analysis used for?
Quantitative analysis is generally used for three purposes.
 Firstly, it’s used to measure differences between groups.
For example, the popularity of different clothing colours or
brands.
 Secondly, it’s used to assess relationships between
variables. For example, the relationship between weather
temperature and voter turnout.
 And third, it’s used to test hypotheses in a scientifically
rigorous way. For example, a hypothesis about the impact of
a certain vaccine.
Again, this contrasts with qualitative analysis, which can be used to
analyse people’s perceptions and feelings about an event or situation.
In other words, things that can’t be reduced to numbers.
How does quantitative analysis work?
Well, since quantitative data analysis is all about analysing
numbers, it’s no surprise that it involves statistics. Statistical
analysis methods form the engine that powers quantitative analysis,
and these methods can vary from pretty basic calculations (for
example, averages and medians) to more sophisticated analyses (for
example, correlations and regressions).
Sounds like gibberish? Don’t worry. We’ll explain all of that in this
post. Importantly, you don’t need to be a statistician or math wiz to
pull off a good quantitative analysis. We’ll break down all the technical
mumbo jumbo in this post.
 

The two “branches” of quantitative analysis

As I mentioned, quantitative analysis is powered by statistical
analysis methods. There are two main “branches” of statistical
methods that are used – descriptive statistics
and inferential statistics. In your research, you might only use
descriptive statistics, or you might use a mix of both, depending on
what you’re trying to figure out. In other words, depending on
your research questions, aims and objectives. I’ll explain how to
choose your methods later.
So, what are descriptive and inferential statistics?
Well, before I can explain that, we need to take a quick detour to
explain some lingo. To understand the difference between these two
branches of statistics, you need to understand two important words.
These words are population and sample.
First up, population. In statistics, the population is
the entire group of people (or animals or organisations or whatever)
that you’re interested in researching. For example, if you were
interested in researching Tesla owners in the US, then the population
would be all Tesla owners in the US.
However, it’s extremely unlikely that you’re going to be able
to interview or survey every single Tesla owner in the US.
Realistically, you’ll likely only get access to a few hundred, or maybe a
few thousand owners using an online survey. This smaller group of
accessible people whose data you actually collect is called
your sample.
So, to recap – the population is the entire group of people you’re
interested in, and the sample is the subset of the population that
you can actually get access to. In other words, the population is
the full chocolate cake, whereas the sample is a slice of that cake.
So, why is this sample-population thing important?
Well, descriptive statistics focus on describing the sample,
while inferential statistics aim to make predictions about
the population, based on the findings within the sample. In other
words, we use one group of statistical methods – descriptive statistics
– to investigate the slice of cake, and another group of methods –
inferential statistics – to draw conclusions about the entire cake. There
I go with the cake analogy again…
With that out the way, let’s take a closer look at each of these branches
in more detail.

Branch 1: Descriptive Statistics

Descriptive statistics serve a simple but critically important role in
your research – to describe your data set – hence the name. In other
words, they help you understand the details of your sample. Unlike
inferential statistics (which we’ll get to soon), descriptive statistics
don’t aim to make inferences or predictions about the entire
population – they’re purely interested in the details of your specific
sample.
When you’re writing up your analysis, descriptive statistics are the
first set of stats you’ll cover, before moving on to inferential statistics.
But, that said, depending on your research objectives and research
questions, they may be the only type of statistics you use. We’ll explore
that a little later.
So, what kind of statistics are usually covered in this
section?
Some common statistical tests used in this branch include the
following:
 Mean – this is simply the mathematical average of a range
of numbers.
 Median – this is the midpoint in a range of numbers when
the numbers are arranged in numerical order. If the data set
 makes up an odd number, then the median is the number
right in the middle of the set. If the data set makes up an
even number, then the median is the midpoint between the
two middle numbers.
 Mode – this is simply the most commonly occurring
number in the data set.
 Standard deviation – this metric indicates how dispersed
a range of numbers is. In other words, how close all the
numbers are to the mean (the average).
 In cases where most of the numbers are quite
close to the average, the standard deviation will be
relatively low.
 Conversely, in cases where the numbers are
scattered all over the place, the standard deviation
will be relatively high.
 Skewness. As the name suggests, skewness indicates how
symmetrical a range of numbers is. In other words, do they
tend to cluster into a smooth bell curve shape in the middle
of the graph, or do they skew to the left or right?
Feeling a bit confused? Let’s look at a practical example using a
small data set.

On the left-hand side is the data set. This details the bodyweight of a
sample of 10 people. On the right-hand side, we have the descriptive
statistics. Let’s take a look at each of them.
First, we can see that the mean weight is 72.4 kilograms. In other
words, the average weight across the sample is 72.4 kilograms.
Straightforward.
Next, we can see that the median is very similar to the mean (the
average). This suggests that this data set has a reasonably symmetrical
distribution (in other words, a relatively smooth, centred distribution
of weights, clustered towards the centre).
In terms of the mode, there is no mode in this data set. This is
because each number is present only once and so there cannot be a
“most common number”. If there were two people who were both 65
kilograms, for example, then the mode would be 65.
Next up is the standard deviation. 10.6 indicates that there’s quite a
wide spread of numbers. We can see this quite easily by looking at the
numbers themselves, which range from 55 to 90, which is quite a
stretch from the mean of 72.4.
And lastly, the skewness of -0.2 tells us that the data is very slightly
negatively skewed. This makes sense since the mean and the median
are slightly different.
As you can see, these descriptive statistics give us some useful
insight into the data set. Of course, this is a very small data set (only
10 records), so we can’t read into these statistics too much. Also, keep
in mind that this is not a list of all possible descriptive statistics – just
the most common ones.
But why do all of these numbers matter?
While these descriptive statistics are all fairly basic, they’re important
for a few reasons:
 Firstly, they help you get both a macro and micro-level
view of your data. In other words, they help you understand
both the big picture and the finer details.
 Secondly, they help you spot potential errors in the data
– for example, if an average is way higher than you’d expect,
or responses to a question are highly varied, this can act as a
warning sign that you need to double-check the data.
 And lastly, these descriptive statistics help inform which
inferential statistical techniques you can use, as those
techniques depend on the skewness (in other words, the
symmetry and normality) of the data.
Simply put, descriptive statistics are really important, even
though the statistical techniques used are fairly basic. All too often at
Grad Coach, we see students skimming over the descriptives in their
eagerness to get to the more exciting inferential methods, and then
landing up with some very flawed results.
Don’t be a sucker – give your descriptive statistics the love and
attention they deserve!
 Branch 2: Inferential Statistics
As I mentioned, while descriptive statistics are all about the details
of your specific data set – your sample – inferential statistics aim
to make inferences about the population. In other words, you’ll use
inferential statistics to make predictions about what you’d expect to
find in the full population.
What kind of predictions, you ask? Well, there are two common types
of predictions that researchers try to make using inferential stats:
 Firstly, predictions about differences between groups –
for example, height differences between children grouped by
their favourite meal or gender.
 And secondly, relationships between variables – for
example, the relationship between body weight and the
number of hours a week a person does yoga.
In other words, inferential statistics (when done correctly), allow you
to connect the dots and make predictions about what you expect to
see in the real world population, based on what you observe in your
sample data. For this reason, inferential statistics are used
for hypothesis testing – in other words, to test hypotheses that
predict changes or differences.

Of course, when you’re working with inferential statistics,

the composition of your sample is really important. In other
words, if your sample doesn’t accurately represent the population
you’re researching, then your findings won’t necessarily be very useful.
For example, if your population of interest is a mix of 50%
male and 50% female, but your sample is 80% male, you can’t
make inferences about the population based on your sample, since it’s
not representative. This area of statistics is called sampling, but we
won’t go down that rabbit hole here (it’s a deep one!) – we’ll save that
for another post.
What statistics are usually used in this branch?
There are many, many different statistical analysis methods within the
inferential branch and it’d be impossible for us to discuss them all
here. So we’ll just take a look at some of the most common inferential
statistical methods so that you have a solid starting point.
First up are T-Tests. T-tests compare the means (the averages) of
two groups of data to assess whether they’re statistically significantly
different. In other words, do they have significantly different means,
standard deviations and skewness.
This type of testing is very useful for understanding just how similar or
different two groups of data are. For example, you might want to
compare the mean blood pressure between two groups of people – one
that has taken a new medication and one that hasn’t – to assess
whether they are significantly different.
Kicking things up a level, we have ANOVA, which stands for “analysis
of variance”. This test is similar to a T-test in that it compares the
means of various groups, but ANOVA allows you to analyse multiple
groups, not just two groups So it’s basically a t-test on steroids…
Next, we have correlation analysis. This type of analysis assesses
the relationship between two variables. In other words, if one variable
increases, does the other variable also increase, decrease or stay the
same. For example, if the average temperature goes up, do average ice
creams sales increase too? We’d expect some sort of relationship
between these two variables intuitively, but correlation analysis
allows us to measure that relationship scientifically.
Lastly, we have regression analysis – this is quite similar to
correlation in that it assesses the relationship between variables, but it
goes a step further to understand cause and effect between
variables, not just whether they move together. In other words, does
the one variable actually cause the other one to move, or do they just
happen to move together naturally thanks to another force? Just
because two variables correlate doesn’t necessarily mean that one
causes the other.
Stats overload…
I hear you. To make this all a little more tangible, let’s take a look at
an example of a correlation in action.
Here’s a scatter plot demonstrating the correlation (relationship)
between weight and height. Intuitively, we’d expect there to be some
relationship between these two variables, which is what we see in this
scatter plot. In other words, the results tend to cluster together in a
diagonal line from bottom left to top right.

As I mentioned, these are are just a handful of inferential techniques

– there are many, many more. Importantly, each statistical method
has its own assumptions and limitations.
For example, some methods only work with normally distributed
(parametric) data, while other methods are designed specifically for
non-parametric data. And that’s exactly why descriptive statistics
are so important – they’re the first step to knowing which
inferential techniques you can and can’t use.
 How to choose the right analysis method
To choose the right statistical methods, you need to think about two
important factors:
1. The type of quantitative data you have (specifically, level of
measurement and the shape of the data). And,
2. Your research questions and hypotheses
Let’s take a closer look at each of these.
Factor 1 – Data type
The first thing you need to consider is the type of data you’ve collected
(or the type of data you will collect). By data types, I’m referring to
the four levels of measurement – namely, nominal, ordinal,
interval and ratio. If you’re not familiar with this lingo, check out this
post which explains each of the four levels of measurement.

Why does this matter?

Well, because different statistical methods and
techniques require different types of data. This is one of the
“assumptions” I mentioned earlier – every method has its
assumptions regarding the type of data.
For example, some techniques work with categorical data (for
example, yes/no type questions, or gender or ethnicity), while others
work with continuous numerical data (for example, age, weight or
income) – and, of course, some work with multiple data types.
If you try to use a statistical method that doesn’t support the data type
you have, your results will be largely meaningless. So, make sure that
you have a clear understanding of what types of data you’ve collected
(or will collect). Once you have this, you can then check which
statistical methods would support your data types here.
If you haven’t collected your data yet, you can work in reverse and look
at which statistical method would give you the most useful insights,
and then design your data collection strategy to collect the correct data
types.
Another important factor to consider is the shape of your data.
Specifically, does it have a normal distribution (in other words, is it
a bell-shaped curve, centred in the middle) or is it very skewed to the
left or the right? Again, different statistical techniques work for
different shapes of data – some are designed for symmetrical data
while others are designed for skewed data.
This is another reminder of why descriptive statistics are so
important – they tell you all about the shape of your data.
Factor 2: Your research questions
The next thing you need to consider is your specific research
questions, as well as your hypotheses (if you have some). The
nature of your research questions and research hypotheses will heavily
influence which statistical methods and techniques you should use.
If you’re just interested in understanding the attributes of
your sample (as opposed to the entire population),
then descriptive statistics are probably all you need. For example,
if you just want to assess the means (averages) and medians (centre
points) of variables in a group of people.
On the other hand, if you aim to
understand differences between groups or relationships betwe
en variables and to infer or predict outcomes in the population, then
you’ll likely need both descriptive statistics and inferential statistics.
So, it’s really important to get very clear about your research aims and
research questions, as well your hypotheses – before you start looking
at which statistical techniques to use.
Never shoehorn a specific statistical technique into your research just
because you like it or have some experience with it. Your choice of
methods must align with all the factors we’ve covered here.