Chapter 3 - Gather and Analyze Information: What kind of information should you gather

Culture Counts: A Guide to Best Practices for Developing Health Promotion Initiatives in Mental Health and Substance Use with Ethnocultural Communities

In this chapter:

• Introduction
• What kind of information should you gather?
• Some things to think about before gathering information
• What you will need information for
• How to get the information you need
• Analyzing the data you have gathered
• Summary of chapter 3

You need two types of information for your health promotion initiative:

• qualitative data--may include people’s stories, beliefs, feelings, suggestions and so on, usually told in their own words, in their own language; photos, audio recordings, videos and so on may also be included
• quantitative data--tells how many, when, what kind; used for producing statistics, usually shown in tables and graphs.

Sometimes more value is placed on quantitative data because they seem more precise and “scientific” than qualitative data. But in fact, both types of data work together to give you the “whole picture” of a situation and allow you to make better choices when developing, running and evaluating your health promotion initiative.

Neither type of data will help you make better choices if they are not accurate and organized. In the information-gathering section of your work plan, include

• how information will be recorded
• who will keep track of all the information
• how the information will be organized.

If you and your partners are undertaking a larger information-gathering project, you might want to find someone with knowledge of statistical analysis techniques and software, such as SPSS.

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