5.1 Thinking through your analysis

You don’t collect data for its own sake, you do it because you need to analyze and document a situation - a health situation in a refugee camp for instance - to help decision-making and service provision. For this reason, analysis actually starts before data collection, which is why you should jump into the Data Analysis Toolkit, which gives some tips and best practices for planning your analysis and data collection together:

• 2.3 Where it stands in the data management cycle
• 2.4 How do I get started with an analysis?
• 2.4.1 Identifying the questions driving your analysis
• 2.4.2 Taking stock of your available resources
• 2.4.3 Building an analysis plan

Building a research plan will help you to be more aware of the data you already have available and the data you really need. To find out your data needs, you can also resort to part 4 - 1 Making decisions to get the data we need and part 4 - 4 Hands-on Review with External Data sets of the Module 4: Getting the data we need of the IFRC Data Playbook.

Don’t hesitate to also look into the one-page point 1D Developing the analysis plan in the The Kap Survey model - Knowledge Attitude and Practices - that gives theoretical and concrete guidelines on analysis plan.

Create a research plan will also help you to organize your data collection and facilitate the first draft of your survey questions.