How to compare, combine and analyze the trends in your research results

Once your research results are in - an event which will happen often if you survey regularly - it's time to make something of the research. You will often find yourself in a situation where you need to compare, combine, and analyze results over time and across different geographic areas. Here's how to get started.Define Your Parameters The first step is to decide what you'll be looking at. Ask yourself:

• What question(s) do I want to answer?
• What results might I expect to see?
• What types of questions do I need to include?
• From what time period should the results be analyzed?
• What demographic or purchasing qualities should the people surveyed share, or lack?
• What geographical areas will you look at?

From there, you'll already have a preliminary list of which research results you need to use, and what you do and don't want to include from various surveys.Throw Out Bad QuestionsThe next step in analyzing trends in your research results is to throw out any bad questions which may have been included in your surveying. For example, sometimes you realize after sending out a survey that certain questions were leading, biased, or too complex.Throw Out the OutliersYou'll also want to discard outliers. If a particular survey response or a survey question is far out of the norm in terms of results (for example, if a survey respondent gives several conflicting answers to questions in the same survey), you will want to use your software tools to exclude such outliers.Look for Statistical Significance As you're analyzing trends in your research results, it's also important to determine whether or not a certain change is considered statistically significant. Statistical significance refers to results which are likely to not be due to random chance.Use a Great Analysis ToolTo be able to perform all of these functions - combine results from different surveys, throw out bad questions and outliers, and examine statistical significance - you'll need a high-quality research analysis tool. You'll also need a great tool to perform the nitty-gritty work of analyzing the various results - generating and sharing reports, viewing the results in different forms, and so on. The quality of your software can determine how quickly and effectively you're able to analyze trends.When you have an action plan, great software, and a basic awareness of what to look for as you're analyzing trends in your research results, the process is surprisingly simple. This makes it easy for you to generate and share results soon after you receive new information.