Analyze & Share Your Findings
What's involved in analyzing and sharing your findings?
Having gathered your data, you now need to summarize and share your findings. Summarizing data involves cleaning, reviewing and summarizing the results for patterns and key insights. Using and sharing your results is about making sure the information you gathered actually informs decisions and leads to improvement.
Quantitative (numeric) data can be summarized by calculating frequencies (how many times does each answer occur?) and percentages (what proportion of respondents answered this way?). A more in-depth analysis would compare frequencies and percentages between various groups of interests, for example by age category or gender identity. Other statistical methods for comparing or modelling data involve careful consideration about sample selection and groupings and should be approached with the support of a researcher or evaluator with expertise in this area.
Qualitative (textual) data includes open-ended survey responses, interview transcripts, focus group notes and written comments. Qualitative data is analyzed through thematic analysis to identify patterns of common ideas that appear across responses. The steps for qualitative analysis include: (1) carefully reading through all the text and highlighting key phrases or ideas (2) grouping similar ideas together to identify themes and (3) refining and summarizing the key themes along with illustrative quotes.
Once you have summarized your findings, think about who needs to know what, and why. Different audiences may need different levels of detail. For example, funders may want a clear summary of outcomes and impact, staff may want practical recommendations for improving services, and participants may appreciate a short, accessible summary of what was learned. Share findings in clear, plain language using visuals such as charts, tables, or short quotes to make the results easy to understand. Be honest about both strengths and areas for improvement, and highlight clear, realistic recommendations. The goal is not just to report information, but to support learning, accountability, and better decision-making.