Analysis Overview

Your Current Stage

Emerging

• Analyses starting to explore client characteristics and target audiences.
• May include use of external research relating to the context e.g. to evidence scale of need/problems.
• Basic analysis, using counts and spreadsheets.
• People verbally report on data as part of strategic discussions.
• Analysis and report creation skills are being explored though results may be variable.
• Bar charts and pie charts may be the only types of analytical presentations.

The next stage up for your organisation is

Learning

• Whole-organisation analyses are beginning to be performed on an ad-hoc basis.
• Beginning to focus on what analysis is meaningful and useful.
• Starting to identify what data should be routinely analysed and potentially automated.
• Analysis is mostly descriptive about what happened in the past e.g. summarising the overview, averages, variation, range.
• Comparative trend analysis is starting to be conducted over time (perhaps on an annual basis).
• Exploration and use of filters and cross tabs are being used to delve further into data.
• Data is manually collated in reports using data from different sources.
• Data is manually reworked for presentation in written reports for different internal/external audiences.
• Learning how to create more sophisticated graphs and presentations of the data (though audiences may find them difficult to interpret and understand).