Slow Down and take Your Time

This will be a bit of a rant. I am used to people wanting everything done by yesterday! Let me be honest now a good analysis takes time. I know data collection is time consuming, I know that computerising that information takes skill but please do not think that you can then find your analysis in five minutes. Analysis takes time as well.

This morning I did one in an hour. This was exceptional. There were also very good reasons why I was limiting what I was doing. Firstly this was not the first time I had done this analysis. The analysis was really the extra variable on a dataset I had analysed at least twice already. Secondly I did not want to look very far as I was well aware that the numbers were small.  I did not test normality, I assumed it, as the sample size was too small to test.

I am not particularly happy with the result. With small data sets such as this you can often see why things happen if you do quite specific plots. I did one and I would not like to say that the significance found was due to just one case. So if I am honest I would be very careful about reporting the results. It rather than giving a conclusion, looks like we have something we should investigate further. Fortunately for me I know the main researcher and that will be his instinct as well.

However,this is the exception, and we now have to go onto the rule. When someone comes to me with less than a weeks deadline I dread it. Seriously I probably need three days out of that week just to decide on the analysis. Then once I have decided there is another run through and then there is presenting the results. Now that is for statistics.

If you are talking qualitative then please you need to spend at least a week just doing the structural and first coding. This is important, this is about familiarisation, this is about getting to know your data. It takes me two to three days with limited quantitative analysis. It takes twice or three times that with complex multifaceted qualitative data. What is more, it can not be rushed. Then you have secondary and final coding with checking facilities and further analysis.

Please if you have an analysis give it at least a month from final data entry to written reports!