Descriptive Analysis and Comparison
The quality of data must be evaluated. In this analysis process, it helps to have access to the raw data and the published data. This comparison can be more telling than simply the published data because there can be no bias in the comparison. Another valuable tool in research is the ability to compare newly collected data (secondary data) with previously collected data (primary data). There two ways in which it can help: first, primary data can confirm newly found data, and second, differences in the data can point out problematic areas.
Data exchange can occur between nations. Data of this type is typified through census data or governmentally collected data. Exchange can also occur between regions, states and municipalities to improve social matters, fix problems, or just display differences.
Temporal data analysis is vital to our understanding of the world we live in and where we are headed. Data collected over time can show researchers infinite amounts of data that can aid in an equally large amount of studies.
Read more about this topic: Quantitative Methods In Criminology
Famous quotes containing the words analysis and/or comparison:
“Cubism had been an analysis of the object and an attempt to put it before us in its totality; both as analysis and as synthesis, it was a criticism of appearance. Surrealism transmuted the object, and suddenly a canvas became an apparition: a new figuration, a real transfiguration.”
—Octavio Paz (b. 1914)
“I have travelled a good deal in Concord; and everywhere, in shops, and offices, and fields, the inhabitants have appeared to me to be doing penance in a thousand remarkable ways.... The twelve labors of Hercules were trifling in comparison with those which my neighbors have undertaken; for they were only twelve, and had an end; but I could never see that these men slew or captured any monster or finished any labor.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)