As a Researcher and Analyst at TONIC, I love working with quantitative data. It is a satisfaction like no other watching all of the results from a vast spreadsheet fall into place, unpicking a complex problem into a beautiful web of understanding that can be valued, graphed, and presented back to a client in a digestible way. Unfortunately, quantitative data can have a difficult reputation within services due to the time it can take to collect, synthesise and understand, particularly when there is a lack of overall knowledge about where to begin. Accordingly, it is too often undervalued in terms of the benefits and opportunities that quality data collection can bring.

What is quantitative data collection?

Quantitative data is the systematic process of gathering numerical data around a business or service that can be analysed statistically. As such, this collection method is objective, measurable and reliable. This data may take the form of demographic information of service users such as age, gender, and ethnicity, or perhaps behavioural traits in terms of frequency of drop out or length of service use, referral pathways and outcomes.

Why collect data?

Collecting quantitative data has the potential to create better experiences for both service providers and users, encouraging insight and opportunities for innovation through the testing of hypotheses based on trends that emerge from the data. Quantitative data facilitates comparison, significance statistical testing, and manipulation of groups to delve deeper with substantial samples.

Furthermore, services, like those TONIC often work to evaluate, intend to prioritise the needs of their users. Quantitative data is one of the most important ways in which to do so; by analysing a vast quantity of user experiences you can underpin characteristics of users, preferences, behaviours and reasons for drop-out, in order to understand what the needs of users are on a large scale and consequently adapt the service to meet these needs more effectively. Using this information to inform planning can also induce a spring-board effect as this type of data analysis enables anticipation of future needs to optimise processes.

Qualitative vs Quantitative data.

Identifying correlations, trends and patterns can be overlooked when relying solely on qualitative data collection. While qualitative data enables detailed and personal feedback which can be invaluable to providers, it can be difficult to ensure every voice within a service is heard, which can lead to overgeneralisation of findings. Quantitative data tackles this problem, as services are able to recognise trends across a large population of their users. However, this does come at the cost of the depth and richness of qualitative feedback, so collecting both when evaluating a service is an essential practice at TONIC.

How should quantitative data be collected?

While there are many ways that services already collect data, the gov.uk website proposes some techniques to enhance data collection to improve potential output. Some points they include are:

1.        Identifying critical data: Recognising the type of data that your service depends on will be a more valuable informant for decision making and strategising based on trends, considering which data source might impact users experience most.

2.        Identify quality rules: Establishing clear benchmarks for standards of practice you would like your data collection to follow is an important step to ensuring consistency and accuracy in future datasets.

3.        Perform a quality assessment: Check the data your service collects against the quality rules established prior to identify areas that may need an improved approach.

To view more of their advice, please see: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-government-data-quality-framework/the-government-data-quality-framework-guidance

Viewing the data collected by a service as pieces to a mosaic is a way in which to value the collection; the more detailed and comprehensive each tile placed into the pattern is, the more beautiful the output will be. Although it can feel daunting in the short- term, in the longer-term, quality quantitative data collection and appropriate analysis brings greater value to services and the output clients can receive. 

Written by Phoebe Exelby Researcher and Analyst at TONIC.