Explore the Health Issue and Set Priorities

STEP 4: Analyze the information.

One of the most frequently omitted steps in research and information gathering is making sense of the information that has been so painstakingly collected. In some cases, what is learned in the information gathering phase of the community action cycle does not seem to be applied in the next phase (Plan Together). Sometimes this is because the planners did not participate in the community exploration, but more often it is because people don’t take the time to organize the information they have gathered and decide what it means.

In this step, then, you will be trying to answer the following questions about the information you have collected:

• What are the most common underlying themes that are revealed through the results? (What phrases reflecting attitudes, opinions, beliefs, values, and perspectives do you frequently observe in the data?)
• How are these themes or perspectives the same or different depending on the characteristics of the respondents?
• What do these results say about people’s belief systems (not just individual practices but the interconnected “whys” behind them)? For example, how do women believe their reproductive processes work or how do people believe the body heals?
• Are there any surprising results? Why are they surprising?
• What are the conclusions we can draw from the results?
• Which results have the most important implications for future program efforts?

There are a variety of methods that you can use to organize information that has been collected. The methods you choose will depend on the amount of information you have to analyze, the level of accuracy and complexity necessary or desired for the analysis, the level of education and skills of participants, the extent to which capacity building is an objective, and the time and resources available. Examples include tables, matrices, pie charts, bar graphs, flannelgraphs, among others.

When there is a lot of information to consolidate and present, entering the data into a computer database is helpful, and there are many software packages available. One of the most commonly used packages to store and analyze survey data is “EpiInfo” which has been developed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. It can be downloaded free of charge through CDC’s internet site or can be ordered through the mail. For more complex analyses many academic institutions use SPSS software and other statistical software packages. If you have the technical ability to design your own database using a standard database package, this is also an option.

Information can also be consolidated manually using tally sheets (see following page) or charts if a computer is not available or appropriate. No matter which means you use to consolidate the data, it is important to ensure that the information is recorded correctly and entered correctly.

Mistakes made while entering and consolidating data will lead to inaccurate information that can later lead to faulty analysis and poor decision-making.

Qualitative Analysis