Analysis Spectrum

Owned by FIS (Unlicensed)
Last updated: 10 Mar 2021 by FIS
5 min read

Overview

Analysis Spectrum and the HPC 

(provide details on the process for each phase/product of the HPC)


Types of analysis

  1. Exploratory Analysis

Focus:  Identify if data required is available (credible, reliable, timely) and structure it in a way that best suit the requirement and identifies information gaps. 

Main activities and questions

  1. Familiarise yourself with the data and check its characteristics - How relevant, sufficient and reliable is the data?

  2. Clean and enrich your data to ensure it is as good as it gets - How clean and ready for analysis is the data? Do I have enough data? 

  3. Are potential signals hidden in the data?

  4. Sort, aggregate and disaggregate and define suitable taxonomy of categories. Code & refine your data – Can the data be better prepared for queries?

  5. Timelines and chronologies can be used to analyse the data

  6. What are the main results so far?

Examples of exploratory analysis findings

  • There is a variety of information sources on food insecurity in country X, primarily from IPC, Fewsnet, WFP and FAO.

  • Some are purely observational, some are quantitative.

  • Recent figures on food security are available after a comprehensive national survey by WFP

  • Findings are mostly aligned.

  • No recent information is available from the southern region where accessibility is limited

  • There seem to be higher levels of food insecurity in rural areas.

OCHA Process and product: 

Secondary Data Review (SDR), DEEP, COD Workplan, 

 

2. Descriptive Analysis

Focus: Summarise and describe the data, to reduce the amount of data and make it easier to compare. Comparison is key to analysis. 

Main activities and questions

  • What is written in these sources? What does the data tell us about a given situation? Who is affected, where, how many people? 

  • Group similar observations and reduce your data - What meaningful comparisons reveal differences?

  • Select the metric that best describes the situation – How can I summarise my data in a way that best describes it?

  • Compare and contrast between and within groups of data to identify meaningful and significant differences and similarities - What consistent patterns, trends, or anomalies emerge from the data? Compare to what?

    • Humanitarian standards (e.g. humanitarian conditions vs SPHERE standards)

    • Time (e.g. Pre- vs in-crisis)

    • Geographic (e.g. Governorate A. vs Governorate B.)

    • Population group (e.g. Refugees vs IDPs)

Examples of descriptive analysis findings

  • There are 15 million people in country X who are food insecure.

  • The large majority is in rural areas.

  • Conflict-affected areas such as district A, B, and C have the highest proportion of food insecure people about the total population.

  • The proportion of food insecure people has more than doubled in the last five years.

OCHA Process and products: 

Prioritization and severity models (especially in sudden onset), Humanitarian Snapshot

 

 3. Explanatory

Focus: Provide answers to the questions of why something is happening, and what factors are at play to make a situation occur. Why is it like this? What is the plausible and rival explanation(s)? Look for associations and correlations. Discover and explain associations or cause-effect relations between different attributes, factors, and events. 

Main activities and questions

  • Connect the dots. Look for association and correlation – What follows what?

  • Link causes to effects – What happened next?

  • Review processes & underlying factors – How does it work?

  • Develop plausible explanations and entertain competing explanations – What else could explain this?

Examples of explanatory analysis findings

  • Current food insecurity is linked to the blockade starting in November 2017, severely restricting imports of essential goods.

  • People in rural areas suffer food insecurity mostly due to limited food products and diversity in markets. In urban areas, food insecurity is driven by lack of financial resources and social discrimination.

  • Before the blockade, Country X already faced the largest food security emergency in the world, with the on-going conflict destructing assets, infrastructure, and food sources.

OCHA Process and products: Humanitarian Needs Overview (explanatory, interpretive and anticipatory Analysis)

 

4. Interpretive: 

Focus:  Start turning data into information. What are the actual implications of the data? “So what”? What does it mean and why does it matter? Start drawing well-supported conclusions.”  Structured analysis techniques: rratings, rankings, and uncertainty

Main activities and questions

  • Rate severity of humanitarian outcomes - What is essential and why?

  • Prioritize most important issues and underlying factors - What is important and why?

  • Evaluate evidence and assess plausibility - How sure are you?

  • Generalize and transfer results where appropriate - Can results be applied to other settings or groups?

  • Focus on main findings and build a case - What are the key messages?

  • Structured analysis techniques: 

    • Ranking Scoring and Prioritizing: List items according to importance, desirability, priority, value, probability, impact or any other criterion.

    • Paired Comparison:  compares each item against every other item, and the analyst can assign a score to show how much more important or more probable item is than the others.

    • Ranked Voting: members of the group individually rank each item in order, according to the expert opinion or what members regard as the items importance

Examples of interpretive analysis findings

OCHA Process and products: the severity of unmet of needs, Humanitarian Needs Overview

 

5. Anticipatory

Focus: What will happen next? If X, then what does this mean for Y? What are the next possible things to happen? What is plausible? This can be done in for example risk analysis, scenario building along with projections

Main activities and questions

  • Extend current conditions to forecast future outcomes - What will happen if nothing changes?

  • Examine and develop alternative futures - What else might happen?

  • Evaluate likelihood and impact - What might be the consequence if this happens?

  • Update interpretation based on likely developments - How does this change current conclusions and key messages?

  • Risks and probability

  • Identify triggers and track new developments - How can I tell if this happens?

Examples of anticipatory analysis findings

  • With current levels of assistance, Country X faces a risk of Famine (IPC Phase 5) given the potential combined impact of the blockade and the extension of the conflict to the centre regions.

  • Without a scale-up of food interventions, an additional 15% of people facing acute food insecurity could be expected in the next six months.

OCHA Process and products: Humanitarian Needs Overview


6. Prescriptive:


Outputs/Resources

Text should include: Essential Reading, Additional Readings, Templates. Examples, Tutorials