Performance Evaluation: Proven Approaches for Improving Program and Organizational Performance

INTERPRETATION

Data analysis focuses on organizing and summarizing information. In your findings, you begin to highlight the most important elements, thereby engaging in the process of turning data into information. Your findings begin to give meaning to the numbers and patterns that the analysis rendered.

Interpretation attaches meaning to such organized information in order to draw plausible and supportable conclusions. In this sense, data analysis deals with the facts, while interpretation calls for value judgments. Because this is an innately subjective process, careful attention and effort should be spent on ensuring fairness, openness, and as much objectivity as is realistic under the circumstances. Even the fairest and most well-meaning ...