Many of your courses include assignments that assess your ability to think critically, particularly by analyzing a topic. Some of these assessments may be in the form of "analysis papers," "book reviews," "literature reviews," "research papers," or something else that requires you to analyze the topic, i.e., break down the subject into parts or categories that address a problem or an issue. (See the File Cabinet for resources on developing each of these types of papers.) The purpose of the analysis is to learn something new about the topic from careful examination of its parts and to report your findings. Thus, the goal of an analysis paper isn't analysis. Analysis is the means by which you arrive at your findings, conclusions, and recommendations, just as the goal of a lab experiment isn't the procedure or analysis; it IS what you discover while completing it. While you will apply particular steps to complete the analysis (much like you would follow steps for completing a lab experiment), the report or paper you write should not focus merely on describing the process (although a methodology section may be included) but should focus on the findings and interpretation discovered through your analysis. These findings should be presented within meaningful categories, or key points essential to your message, points that are critical to the audience and purpose. Thus, the categories will help you interpret and communicate the information to the audience who needs it. If you are unsure about which type of analysis to conduct (or "category" to explore), the analytic spectrum (Descriptive, Explanatory, Evaluative, or Estimative) may give you a framework from which to begin. You could also apply Elements of a Finding methodology. used by auditors completing internal assessments. Elements of a Finding consider: Criteria (how it should be), Condition (how it is), Cause (why it is), and Effects (what it means), then issues a recommendation to address the cause.
To get started with an analysis assignment, consider the following guiding questions and checklist. Use the 4P toolkit and rubric to conduct a more thorough analysis of the assignment. An example of an analytical intelligence report includes principles for analytical writing AND for organizing your writing for impact.
Guiding Questions
- What is the purpose of your analysis? Remember that the purpose (or goal) is not necessarily analysis. Analysis is the tool or method of fully understanding a topic to help you discover information, interpret and evaluate findings, draw conclusions, and even make recommendations that address an issue or solve a problem.
- What are the implications of your analysis? Why does the issue need to be addressed?
- What is the overall goal you want to attain? Are you formulating or defending a position, making a recommendation?
- Who will use or benefit from the information? Who is the audience your analysis addresses? Who are the stakeholders?
- What do they have to gain or lose from your analysis or from the implications of your findings? What are their perspectives regarding the issue? Where do they come from? Are they justified?
- What is your research question? What problem does your analysis address?
- How will you complete your research? What sources of information will you use? Are they accurate? reliable?
- How will you build your expertise on the subject matter, including the topics you need to know AND the analytical tools you will apply?
- How will you evaluate different points of view? How will you incorporate opposing viewpoints in your analysis?
- How will you analyze the information you collect? What classifications or categories will help you "make sense of" and communicate the information?
Product
- What type of product or paper have you been asked to prepare or what does the rhetorical context require you to prepare (a research paper, a report, a memo brief)?
- What conventions will guide the development, organization, style, and presentation of your product?
- How will you write your analysis to achieve the immediate purpose you have identified and to advance the long-range goals?
- How will you present the analysis so that the reader understands the methods you used to study and evaluate the information gathered from your research?
- What's the bottom line, or thesis, of your analysis? Where will you state this in the paper?
Process
- What is the timeframe you have to complete the analysis?
- How many iterations do you expect to prepare?
- From whom will you seek feedback?
- Is your analysis based on a collaborative effort? How will roles be assigned.
Checklist*
- CLARITY: Could you elaborate further on that point? Could you express that point in another way? Could you give me an illustration? Could you give me an example? Clarity is the gateway standard. If a statement is unclear, we cannot determine whether it is accurate or relevant. In fact, we cannot tell anything about it because we don't yet know what it is saying. For example, the question, "What can be done about the education system in America?" is unclear. In order to address the question adequately, we would need to have a clearer understanding of what the person asking the question is considering the "problem" to be. A clearer question might be "What can educators do to ensure that students learn the skills and abilities which help them function successfully on the job and in their daily decision-making?"
- ACCURACY: Is that really true? How could we check that? How could we find out if that is true? A statement can be clear but not accurate, as in "Most dogs are over 300 pounds in weight."
- PRECISION: Could you give more details? Could you be more specific? A statement can be both clear and accurate, but not precise, as in "Jack is overweight." (We don’t know how overweight Jack is, one pound or 500 pounds.)
- RELEVANCE: How is that connected to the question? How does that bear on the issue? A statement can be clear, accurate, and precise, but not relevant to the question at issue. For example, students often think that the amount of effort they put into a course should be used in raising their grade in a course. Often, however, the "effort" does not measure the quality of student learning; and when this is so, effort is irrelevant to their appropriate grade.
- DEPTH: How does your answer address the complexities in the question? How are you taking into account the problems in the question? Is that dealing with the most significant factors? A statement can be clear, accurate, precise, and relevant, but superficial (that is, lack depth). For example, the statement, "Just say No!" which is often used to discourage children and teens from using drugs, is clear, accurate, precise, and relevant. Nevertheless, it lacks depth because it treats an extremely complex issue, the pervasive problem of drug use among young people, superficially. It fails to deal with the complexities of the issue.
- BREADTH: Do you need to consider another point of view? Is there another way to look at this question? What would this look like from a conservative standpoint? What would this look like from the point of view of (fill in the blank)? A line of reasoning may be clear accurate, precise, relevant, and deep, but lack breadth (as in an argument from either the conservative or liberal standpoint which gets deeply into an issue, but only recognizes the insights of one side of the question.)
- LOGIC: Does this really make sense? Does that follow from what you said? How does that follow? But before you implied this, and now you are saying that; how can both be true? When we think, we bring a variety of thoughts together into some order. When the combination of thoughts are mutually supporting and make sense in combination, the thinking is "logical." When the combination is not mutually supporting, is contradictory in some sense or does not "make sense," the combination is not logical.
- FAIRNESS: Do you have a vested interest in this issue? Are you sympathetically representing the viewpoints of others? Human think is often biased in the direction of the thinker - in what are the perceived interests of the thinker. Humans do not naturally consider the rights and needs of others on the same plane with their own rights and needs. We therefore must actively work to make sure we are applying the intellectual standard of fairness to our thinking. Since we naturally see ourselves as fair even when we are unfair, this can be very difficult. A commitment to fairmindedness is a starting place.
Image source: ©iStock.com/thodonal
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