Collecting and reading data
Data methods, quality and honest interpretation.
Three hours on collecting and reading data: the data journey, choosing methods that follow the question, judging quality, reading variation and averages honestly, and why people see the same figure differently.
- Level
- Focus
- Learning time
- 3 hours
- Where
- Understanding Data and Data Analysis
- Price
- £69
When you step up to a higher level, what you paid in the last 12 months for lower-level courses inside the bigger course comes off its price, in proportion to how much of each is inside it, whichever topic it's from. Courses at the same or a lower level don't give credit against each other. A Focus course or above always costs at least £15. Read the full terms
Certificate of Completion, or Certificate of Completion and Assessment with a short assessment
Overview and Outcomes.
Who It's For
Managers, analysts, board members and service leaders in councils, the NHS, housing, police, fire and charities in Wales and England.
Overview
This Focus brings together the habits that decide whether a figure deserves trust. It opens with why data is never raw, following the six-step data journey with Gitelman and Einhorn. It then sets out how method follows the question, using McGrath's three-horned dilemma and Welsh census and language cases, and how quality is made, through Deming's tests, data types and the Labour Force Survey. It closes with reading data honestly, from common and special cause variation to natural frequencies, and with why capable people read the same figure differently, drawing on noise, motivated numeracy and decision hygiene.
Aims
This Focus aims to develop leaders who ask how a number was made before they act on it. It builds the confidence to match methods to decisions, judge how much weight a figure can bear, avoid reacting to noise as signal and help a team read data independently before combining views.
In summary, you will be able to:
- Question how any figure was collected, classified and presented before relying on it.
- Distinguish real signals from ordinary variation in performance data.
- Lead team discussions of data that reduce noise and shared blind spots.
What you'll develop
Through this Focus course, you will build the ability to:
- Use the five questions for any number to judge how much weight a figure can bear before you act on it.
- Plan data collection by working through the six steps from decision to method, starting with the decision the data must inform.
- Apply Deming's four tests of accurate, valid, precise and reliable to a figure you use, and identify where it is weakest.
- Distinguish common cause from special cause variation, and explain why reacting to every movement as a signal, which Deming called tampering, makes a stable process worse.
- Use plain questions to expose what averages, charts and relative risk figures leave out before you act on them.
- Apply the six steps of decision hygiene so that a team or board reads data independently before combining views.
Built from 2 parts.
3 hours of learning.
- 01Method follows the questionData collection methods, types and qualityBitesize3 modules
- 02Seeing differentlyReading data honestly and differing perceptionsBitesize2 modules
Keep going.
Part of the Understanding Data and Data Analysis topic, also sold whole as Beyond the dashboard.
Go deeper, and pay only the difference
- You are hereFocus, 3 hours, £69
- Next stepExplore, Data and judgement, 6 hours, £129. Already own the Focus? You pay £60.
- The whole topicImmerse, Beyond the dashboard, 11 hours, £249. Already own the Focus? You pay £180.
When you step up to a higher level, what you paid in the last 12 months for lower-level courses inside the bigger course comes off its price, in proportion to how much of each is inside it, whichever topic it's from. Courses at the same or a lower level don't give credit against each other. A Focus course or above always costs at least £15. Prices per person. Read the full terms
Also part of: Leading with data and digital, From data to decisions