Data analysis

• How did the authors analyse their data?
• Is it appropriate to the research approach

Qualitative approach - Usually content analysis or thematic analysis.

• Do the authors show in detail the process that occurred to get to the final categories (auditibility)?
• Do the authors show the categories of themes by using participant dialogue (quotes) or field notes to represent the themes (credibility)
• Do more than one researcher analyse the data (peer review)?
• How does all this affect the findings?

Quantitative approach - Usually either descriptive or inferential statistics

• What statistical tests did the researcher use?
• Did the researcher explain why they used descriptive and/or inferential statistics?
• Did they explain which tests they used and the relevance to the data?
• Are the tables and graphs easy to understand and well explained?
• This all affects validity of the findings
• What is the overall effect of this on the results?

Next: Findings and discussion issues