Overview
Text should include: Step by Step, Checklist, SOPs, Tips
Analysis workflow
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The analysis workflow describes the bigger picture of analysis and the different steps to undertake when analyzing a topic, and how each step builds upon the findings of the previous ones. Analysis needs to be planned and designed. The analysis workflow has four steps, each of which has several guiding questions and possible outputs.
Four steps of analysis workflow
Design
Acquire
Analyse (
exploreexplore, describe, explain, interpret, prescribe)
Communicate
1. Design
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The design phase precedes analytical processes and is about selecting the best strategies for ensuring quality analysis. It is preparatory in essence and elaborates and refine the focus, approach, method, tools, and plan necessary to provide relevant and credible conclusions.Preparedness (CODs, indicators, assessment registry, HID)
- Tips (e.g. six -hat or point system)
Analysis Spectrum and the HPC
(provide details on the process for each phase/product of the HPC)
- Exploratory
- Aggregation, disaggregation
- Chronologies, timelines
- SDR
- Describe
- Prioritization (sudden onset)
- Severity (sudden onset)
- Explain
- Cause and effect
- Interpret
- Ratings, rankings and uncertainty
- Anticipate
- Prediction, forecasting
- scenario building
Exploratory
Focus: identify if data required is available (credible, reliable, timely) and structure it in a way that best suit the requirement and identifies information gaps.
Main activities and questions
- Familiarise yourself with the data and check its characteristics - How relevant, sufficient and reliable is the data?
- Clean & enrich your data to ensure it is as good as it gets - How clean and ready for analysis is the data? Do I have enough data?
- Are potential signals hidden in the data?
- Sort, aggregate and disaggregate and define suitable taxonomy of categories. Code & refine your data – Can the data be better prepared for queries?
- What are the main results so far?
Examples of analysis findings
- There is a variety of information sources on food insecurity in country X, primarily from IPC, Fewsnet, WFP and FAO.
- Some are purely observational, some are quantitative.
- Recent figures on food security are available after a comprehensive national survey by WFP
- Findings are mostly aligned.
- No recent information is available from the southern region where accessibility is limited
- There seem to be higher levels of food insecurity in rural areas.
Descriptive
Focus: What is written in these sources? What does the data tell us about a given situation? Who is affected, where, how many people? Summarise and describe the data, to reduce the amount of data and make it easier to compare. Comparison is key to analysis
Main activities
- Group similar observations and reduce your data - What meaningful comparisons reveal differences?
- Select the metric that best describes the situation – How can I summarise my data in a way that best describes it?
- Compare and contrast between and within groups of data to identify meaningful and significant differences and similarities - What consistent patterns, trends, or anomalies emerge from the data?
Compare to what?
- Humanitarian standards (e.g. humanitarian conditions vs SPHERE standards)
- Time (e.g. Pre- vs in-crisis)
- Geographic (e.g. Governorate A. vs Governorate B.)
- Population group (e.g. Refugees vs IDPs
Examples of analysis findings
- There are 15 million people in country X who are food insecure.
- The large majority is in rural areas.
- Conflict-affected areas such as district A, B and C have the highest proportion of food insecure people about the total population.
- The proportion of food insecure people has more than doubled in the last five years.
Explanatory
Interpretive:
Anticipatory:
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Process
Text should include: Step by Step, Checklist, SOPs, The secret to successful analysis is targeting the analytic product to specific customers and answering the questions they are or should be asking. Make sure you understand the broader perspective by considering the full analytic landscape before narrowing the focus to conceptualize a specific product. Explore and establish the range of analytical approaches or techniques that can be employed to produce the analysis and the benefits of including others in the process.
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Preparedness Activities:
COD Agreements
Indicators
Assessment registry
Reference maps
Tips
six -hat or point system
2. Acquire
You need to think about the information you seek and how you evaluate its relevance and trustworthiness. You also need to manage, store and protect this data in a way that will ease the analysis at a later stage and avoid any misuse or harmful consequences.
The main questions to consider in this phase: What information is already available and usable? What is missing and how to obtain it? How to collect accurate and unbiased information? How Should I Manage, Store and Protect my Data?
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Preparedness Activities:
Tips
3. Analysis
Analysis spectrum, joint analysis
Preparedness activity
Tips
4. Communicate
The impact of your analysis is largely determined by the organization, clarity, and credibility of your argument. The more tailored your product is to your customer, the more impact it will have.
Do not postpone starting to write. Jot down your initial ideas already during the exploratory phase. This will help structure your thoughts and you can use your notes and unfinished sentences later on when you further develop your end product. Good writing is a function of good thinking but takes time. Analytical writing is developed word by word, sentence by sentence.
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Preparedness activities
Tips
Outputs/Resources
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Text should include Essential Reading, Additional Readings, Templates. Examples, Tutorials
Guidance
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