Implementing your research project: analysing your data

Judith Barton, Director of Coaching

Once you have collected your information you will need to analyse it. In this blog I will be looking at two broad methods of data analysis – quantitative (numbers) and qualitative (words). Then I will comment on drawing conclusions from your data.

1.  Quantitative data analysis.
First, to say that sophisticated statistical analysis should probably best be left to sophisticated statisticians! If your research project includes large data sets based on random samples looking for proof of generalisable ‘cause and effect’ relationships or statistical modelling this is probably best done with the advice of a specialist in this area - who will already have advised you on your research question, research design and methodology. 

Quantitative analysis is basically counting – how many, how much, how often, how long – and aims to be logical, and objective – although this depends on how objectively your data are collected, coded and allocated. In this section I will be providing a brief overview of some types of numerical data and look at simpler analysis which would be relevant for organisational or survey data such as sickness absence rates, staff turnover, customer complaints, sales figures, educational achievement of students or health outcomes for patients.  The focus will be on ‘descriptive statistics’ and graphical presentation of data. 

Numerical data can either be ‘categorical’ or ‘quantifiable’.

Categorical data can be classified into groups and a number allocated – for example, gender.  In this case, you could allocate ‘1’ to subjects who are Male, and ‘2’ to subjects who are Female. Once these values have been allocated to each subject correctly, data can be inputted into a simple spreadsheet such as Excel and the proportion of male to female identified. Analysis can then describe, say, the proportion of male to female participants who take up the offer of coaching training in an organisation or the proportion of male to females who are being or have been coached.  

Quantifiable numbers are real numerical values which can be ranked in order – continuous data can take any point in a range, for example length of service in an organisation; discrete data can be measured precisely, for example number of clients coached or number of customers served.
The first step towards completing your data analysis is coding. This may be done as part of the data collection, as when a survey asks you to select an answer which most applies to you, e.g. what age are you? Are, more usually, which of a predetermined age group do you belong to?  Coding simply refers to allocating a single number to a variable or factor – this might be the actual number, e.g. actual income of a subject; or a number allocated to a grouping of income.  For the former, an example of income might be £21,500; and of an income group, £20,000 - £29, 999 – to which the actual income would be allocated in this example. It is helpful to use established, published coding frames where available and relevant – e.g. classification of ethnic status, social class or marital status as coded by the Office of Population Censuses and Survey. 

Once coded the next step is to input your data into the computer and software programme of your choice.  Once entered, it is crucial to check for errors – in either the coding or the data entry.  This can be very time-consuming, but deciding not to undertake it can be dangerous, as errors (there are always errors!) will feed through into the analysis and findings, and from there lead you to false conclusions.

The first stage of analysis is usually about exploring the data you have collected and looking for findings of interest. For evaluating the effectiveness of coaching in an organisation you may wish to look at the distribution of different age groups compared to the benefit they perceive they have received from coaching, or the number of coaching sessions research subjects have received compared to the number of days lost to sickness/absence. The easiest way to start understanding the data is through the use of tables and, particularly, diagrams such as bar charts (to show the frequency of occurrences from highest to lowest), pie charts (to show the proportion of distribution of variables) or scattergrams (to show the relationship between two variables).  Graphic presentation of data can now easily and speedily be generated by everyday software. Descriptive statistics enable numerical descriptions and comparisons of variables, and focus on the spread of the variable across your subjects; and the tendency of the data to group towards the centre.  Examples of the latter include the mode (the value that occurs most frequently), the mean or average, and the median (which represents the middle value).  Measures of the spread of data include for example: the range (difference between the highest and lowest); the inter-quartile range (the difference within 50% of values) and the standard deviation (the extent to which data differ from the average).  

A word of warning about the ease in which numerical data can be analysed by spreadsheets such as ‘Excel’.  This software (and others like it) can readily be used to present tables, graphs of various sorts and quite complex statistical analyses. Be aware that, although this software can produce sophisticated graphs and statistics these are only as valid and useful as the quality of data input and the correctness of the function requested of the programme – or, the risk is, as the acronym GIGO has it, Garbage In, Garbage Out, even if it is beautifully presented! 

Reference: M Saunders, P Lewis, A Thornhill (2000) Research Methods for Business Studies 2nd edition, Chapter 11.  This includes more technical detail and more information about statistical analysis.

2. Qualitative data analysis
Many of us are more comfortable with words than numbers so there is a tendency to see qualitative data analysis as easy – which is not necessarily the case.  You still need to take care that you can ensure that your conclusions are based on the evidence you have collected. 

A common method of qualitative data analysis is ‘categorisation’ – or coding - which breaks down the data into meaningful and related parts (categories) allowing you to identify key themes from different sources (e.g. interview transcripts or policy documents). These categories enable you to manage your data and bring together concepts and ideas from the data. Coding can be done manually (post-it notes, cutting and pasting from interview transcripts) or electronically (creating a coding table or using computer software designed for qualitative analysis). Coding is an iterative process and is usually done as you go along, after each interview for example, checking all the while that your themes or concepts accurately reflect the data you have collected.  Re-analysing earlier interview data in the light of categories or themes emerging from later interviews can enhance and deepen your understanding of the data and its significance; or you may wish to re-catergorise earlier interviews in the light of understanding developed in the later interviews. It can also be helpful for you to keep a record of ideas and any other information such as the context, individuals involved or non-verbal cues as you go along. Keeping summaries of key points from each interview can also help you to identify emerging themes and categories.

It is probably more usual to use an inductive approach to analysing qualitative data – that is, you seek to build up theory and understanding derived from and grounded in the data you collect (rather than a deductive approach which involves starting with a theory or hypothesis then collecting data to test the theory’s validity).  This inductive approach allows your research participants to ‘drive’ the development of theory and avoids the risk that their views would be forced into a theory or interpretation which they themselves would disavow.  It can be useful to quantify qualitative data – i.e to count the number of times a particular event, issue or theme occurs in the course of your data collection and present this as a table.

3. Drawing conclusions from your data analysis.
Whichever type of data you collect and analyse, great care must be taken to ensure that the conclusions you draw from the data are sound and accurate.  Review your data and analysis carefully and check that you have relevant and appropriate evidence for your conclusions to the research. For example, a small survey of staff who have been on a coaching programme is unlikely to ‘prove (or disprove) that coaching is effective’.  It may however indicate, that for those staff involved, they perceived that their engagement and motivation at work, and hence their performance, were improved.  This could, however, inform a larger study, with measurable outcomes to formally evaluate the effectiveness of coaching in the workplace. Alternatively, a large questionnaire survey could provide evidence of effectiveness of coaching but would be less likely to explore the staff’s perceptions and experiences of coaching and being coached.


Reference: M Saunders, P Lewis, A Thornhill (2000) Research Methods for Business Studies 2nd edition, Chapter 12.  This also includes more technical detail and information.

Permissions to Coach

Martin Hill, Senior Tutor

One of the recurring topics that I have noticed in my supervisionary practice is the issue of contracting within the coaching session itself. Most coaches put a lot of focus and attention on the formal legal contract which governs the coaching intervention-especially the bits about payment, cancellations, terminations etc.etc. However the informal contracting that arises within the session itself rarely attracts the same levels of attention and focus.

What do I mean by informal contracting? It is the practice of ensuring that you have the client’s permission, or consent for any new development or initiative that may arise within a session. For example, the client may start a session by declaring that they wish to discuss a particular topic or goal, but as the session develops a different one arises. How do you manage that when it arises within your own practice?  I check in with the client, highlight what had arisen and then ask which topic or goal they now wish to focus on. By actively seeking that permission, both the client and I were clear as to the focus for the rest of the session and the aims, outputs and outcomes that were to be aimed for.

Here are some of the occasions when the need for permissions may arise:
•    Boundary Management – you may have contracted to coach the client within the constraints of certain boundaries; for example, you may be hired by an organisation to deliver coaching for a particular organisational goal, such as leadership or management development. If the coachee then wishes to expand the scope of the session to their own personal development. Not only would the expectations of the coachee have to be managed, but it may also necessitate the coach having to “park” that topic until the permission of the organisation had been sought to expand the initially agreed parameters of the coaching intervention. (NB As you gain wider experience as a coach, you can often avoid such issues arising, by anticipating developments that may arise and addressing those in your initial formal contracting with the sponsor.)

•    Role Management – sometimes in sessions, subject to this being within the coach’s range of competence and ability, the role of the coach may need to shift, for example to mentor role, in order to assist the client’s learning or knowledge to enable them to develop their own options and ideas. By actively seeking permission to shift roles, and then to shift back, the client and the coach are both clear as to which role the coach is in and thus which boundaries or rules apply for that role- thus, managing expectations for each.

•    Confidentiality Issues – in the, hopefully, rare occasions when a coach is faced with a situation where confidentiality has to be broken because of something that has arisen in a session, it is critical that the coach explains that disclosure needs to be made and seeks the client’s permission to do so. This is a rare occasion where, if the client refused permission, the coach needs to explain that their professional and ethical obligations mean that the disclosure must be made.

•    Feedback – this is a key tool and skill that a coach can use to really help the client to gain a wider perspective and understanding. In order to “signpost” to the client, and thus ensure that they are actively listening and are focused, I find it is useful to say something such as “Would it assist if I provided some feedback?” or “May I provide some feedback or observations?”  This also provides clarity and understanding.

•    Challenge – although challenge is a key, distinguishing feature of coaching from other interventions, each client has a different “tolerance” level or preference to how that challenge occurs. The style of challenge is something I specifically address in sessions and seek permission, having agreed the preferred approach. Actively seeking this permission manages the client’s expectations and helps build rapport and trust. In fact, my reflection on my own practice is that the majority of clients actively desire a strong level of challenge, as and when appropriate.

•    Use of tools/models – it is often useful to seek client’s permission when thinking of using a model or tool as not only does this provide an opportunity to explain that particular intervention and how it will work, but it also helps build rapport and trust as it makes the client feel more comfortable and relaxed as they have a greater awareness of what is taking place.

•    Supervision – if planning to record the session for supervision purposes; or if it is to be an observed session – ensure that client’s express permission and consent is obtained. Even if your supervisionary practice is to engage in post session discussion  of anonymised sessions with your supervisor or peer or group supervision colleagues, then it is useful to explain this to your client and seek permission.

The above is not an exhaustive list. In short you will find that the more transparent and collaborative approach you take to informal contracting/permissions, the more successful the coaching interventions tend to be as there is greater clarity for both coach and client and thus greater rapport and trust.

Permissions + Rapport/Trust Building = Success

Implementing your research project - collecting your data

Judith Barton

In this blog I will be looking at collecting information for your research project.  This will include three common methods of collecting data – the survey questionnaire; the focus group; and individual interviews. 

1.  Survey questionnaire.  With questionnaires every effort needs to be made to persuade people to respond – firstly by providing an explanation of why it is important, how completing the question will help – improve services, working life – and secondly by making it as easy as possible for respondents to provide meaningful answers. This is especially important when respondents are answering questions on their own – such as a postal or online survey.  The value of piloting a questionnaire cannot be overstated as a means of ensuring that you have not got any questions that are ambiguous, incomplete or unanswerable. (Piloting a questionnaire means asking a small number of people to complete it and identify any difficulties in answering questions and recording the answers.  You are not interested in the actual answers, only in the ease of use of the questionnaire and the meaningfulness of the answers). 

There are some key principles involved in designing a postal/online questionnaire, which include:

Clarity of instructions – for example, do you want respondents to tick a box? to circle an answer? or to ‘delete as necessary’.  If instructions are not crystal clear, you may end up with returned questionnaires that you cannot analyse without difficulty; that have gaps where respondents could not work out what you wanted; or a low response rate because respondents found it all too difficult and time-consuming.

Clarity of questions – for example, do not include two questions in one. This is relevant to questions asking ‘free text’ responses, such as “please write down how easy was it to establish rapport with your and did your coachee engage in the coaching process?” This should be two questions – the first about rapport; and the second about coachee engagement.  Where ‘multiple choice’ questions are involved there are two points of particular importance.  First, ensure that all possible options are included – often, a question will not be relevant to a particular respondent or not all respondents will know an answer, so the options of ‘not applicable’ and ‘not known’ are essential where this may be the case.  This is particularly significant in online questionnaires, where the inability to provide an answer to one question often prevents the respondent from moving on to the next one. Secondly, make sure that your options are mutually exclusive – for example, if you are asking respondents to allocate themselves to an age range.  ’25-35 years’ and ’35-45 years’ is not helpful for those who are 35 years old!  This could better be classified as ’26-35 years’ and ‘36-45 years’, or ’25-34 years’ and ‘35-44 years’.  The same principles apply to income range; length of time in employment; or any other numerical ranges.  

 2. In-depth interview topic guide. This guidance is intended for face-to-face or telephone interviews. 

The interview process. The first requirement for carrying out an in-depth interview on any subject is to establish rapport and agree the ‘contract’ – how the interview will be carried out, any ‘ground rules’, anonymisation or pseudonimisation, confidentiality (and the limits to confidentiality) – sounds familiar?! Many of the skills and processes of the coaching conversation are equally applicable to the in-depth research interview – except that the purpose is different. In the research interview, the purpose is to collect accurate and meaningful information, relevant to the research topic and question.  So, deep listening, questioning, probing and summarising skills are all central to carrying out a successful research interview.  

You may need to use some ‘closed’ questions for specific information – e.g. age group, length of time in this employment, status within the business/organisation.  But primarily the information you are seeking will be gleaned through ‘open’ questions – ‘how do you feel about …..?’, what do you think about ….?’, ‘tell me more about what happened when …….’  It is good practice to prepare and pilot an interview guide which simply lists the topics you wish to discuss without specifying the order and wording of questions – a particular topic might be covered at the beginning, middle or end of the process depending on the natural ‘flow’ of the interview. 

Recording the interview.  Another issue in common with coaching is recording the interview – the usual process is audio recording, which is transcribed and the interviewee asked to amend, edit or clarify and then confirm the accuracy of the transcript. This often raises issues of confidentiality, especially when a relatively small number of people are being interviewed who all work in the same, relatively small organisation or section/level of an organisation.  You need to be very clear about who will have access to the recording; how the information (recorded and written) will be securely stored; and when/how it will be destroyed.  Interviewees also need to know about how their information will be written up, and how you intend to protect their information.  This can be through using false names, initials or numbers to identify individuals; changing gender, age or using generic descriptions of role or status within the organisation.  Issues of confidentiality should be addressed at the very beginning and can be an important element of creating rapport and establishing trust. 

3. Focus groups

The process. Running a successful focus group needs an experienced and skilled facilitator, who is expert in ensuring that the group is a ‘safe place’ for all members to engage with the discussion, respond accurately, respect each other and their opinions/feelings, and all have the opportunity to contribute in the knowledge that their contribution will be taken seriously. These ‘ground rules’ need to be established at the beginning – and should be written down in the invitation to individuals to participate in the group. Again, these will be common themes to those accustomed to team coaching or group supervision.  Facilitation skills are key.  A topic guide to help you keep the ‘focus’ of the discussion is also crucial – this will also ensure that you do not forget to discuss all aspects of the research question. 

The skills of developing rapport, listening, questioning and summarising are required for focus groups as much as for in-depth interviews, with ‘managing’ the group an additional requirement. 

Recording. The discussion is usually audio-recorded, with the same provisos about confidentiality as the in-depth interview.  If for some reason you (or members of the group) prefer to have contemporaneous notes taken then you will need another person to do this – it is not reasonable to expect one person to facilitate the discussion and take notes. Generally, audio-recording is a more convenient method, providing that you can use adequate equipment and that all members of the group agree to the recording.  

The next blog in this series will look at analysing the information and drawing conclusions from it.

Resolutions - A goal setting lesson

Martin Hill, Senior Tutor BSC

“Resolutions are most often empty promises for those who have an abundance of dreams, but refuse to wake up and live them”- Dr Steve Maraboli.

 When we started the New Year everyone’s thoughts turned to setting resolutions. A boom time for diet clubs and gym memberships. The media coverage also saturates our every moment with articles about resolutions, often “guilting” people into setting resolutions – and inevitably these resolutions are so unrealistically ambitious that they are designed to inevitably fail.

“What’s all this got to do with coaching?” I hear you ask. Well let’s look at the definition of resolution. “The act of resolving or determining upon an action, course of action, method, procedure, etc.” (www.dictionary.com) That definition sums up for me what I am trying to achieve in a coaching intervention with my clients.

Coaching should be goal based and action-orientated. So what lessons can we learn from our resolutions experience and knowledge?

• Whose is it? Notice the influence of media or peer pressure? If the resolution or goal is not wholly owned and believed in by the individual – you’re doomed before you start. The resolution or goal must be desired by, believed in and owned by the individual- have you connected head, hand and heart?
• Realistic? Unless you’re called Tim Peake you’re goal to become an ambition is perhaps more Star Farce than Star Wars. But it took Tim Peake from 2008 until 2015 to achieve that ambition. If it is an ambitious, big, goal – bear in mind the proverb “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time”. Make the goal attainable by setting small steps and ensuring that there is always a future, forward facing, focus.
• Get back on the bike- even with the most committed, the road to embedding the new resolution is often not a straight A to B journey. Falls and setups are inevitable, to quote Nat King Cole:

“Nothing’s impossible, I have found
For when my chin is on the ground.
I pick myself up,
Dust myself off
And start all over again.”

Your job as the coach is help the individual reflect, reassess and then re-motivate them.
Keeping with the theme of resolutions – you will undoubtedly be setting your personal resolutions – but what about your coaching resolutions? Need some food for thought?

• Review and refresh your Continuing Professional Development plan – does it address your needs AND your business needs?
• Widen your network – what plans do you have to increase your networking breadth? A gentle introduction could be the British School of Coaching’s Network - the next UK Network is May 2016 and the Middle East Network is February 2016
• Join a professional coaching body – remember all British School Of Coaching learners have affiliate membership of International Society of Qualified Coaches (ISQC) whilst they are studying. Look at the choices out there and select the one that suits your needs and your practice.
• Set a learning goal – what new skill do you want to learn or what do you want to improve?
• Continuous Improvement – how can you ensure that you extract every drop of learning from your own coaching interactions? What is your reflective learning practice? Why not embrace new technology and use your smart phone to make a voice recording to capture your thoughts, feelings and reflections immediately after the session – and then write up later, allowing for further reflection in the interim.
• Supervision – review and refresh your own supervision regime. Try a combination of approaches – individual or peer or group. An opportunity to sample a group supervision session is available at the British School of Coaching’s UK Network in May 2016.

Hope that gives you some food for thought. May I take this opportunity to wish you all a Happy, Healthy and Prosperous 2016!!