PrintAnalytical Skills
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Switching gears a little bit and moving away from the overarching practices needed in today's job market, we're now going to focus in on specific skills that employers are looking for!
The Oxford Dictionary(link is external) defines analysis as the “detailed examination of the elements or structure of something, typically as a basis for discussion or interpretation.” In other words, we examine something, so we can discuss it or interpret it.
The something can be just about anything—last night’s baseball game, a Beatles album, your family budget, medical results, a business plan, marketing strategy, sales results, consumer behavior, an environmental study (hey, now we’re talking…), a policy, energy information, etc..
In this program, of course, we are mostly concerned with those things related to policy, energy, and the environment (sustainability). In your courses, you’ll examine reports, policies, proposals, and data on topics related to energy and sustainability policy from a wide range of sources.
The methods of examination fall into two basic categories: qualitative methods and quantitative methods.
Qualitative methods explore information that is often subjective, such as descriptions and images, to discover more about the thing we are examining. These kinds of methods don’t begin by saying, “Here’s what I think is happening and here are the variables I’m going to measure to prove that what I think is or is not true.” Instead, they look to gain an understanding of the underlying interactions. This kind of research is often used to study human behavior, especially related to decision-making.
I think of qualitative methods as less number driven, or more narrative in some instances! For example, information gathered from commentary that was provided through an open-ended question on a survey (vs. choosing an answer from a provided multiple choice list).
Quantitative methods use facts and statistics (numbers!) to prove or extract something about the thing we are examining. These methods do start with defined variables and measurements and often involve statistical analysis. Graphs like the one below are created using quantitative data in the form of numbers.
