Presenting and analysing fieldwork data

Your virtual fieldwork in Liverpool means you have collected quantitative data (numbers) as well as qualitative information. You need to bring all of this together and present it, this will tell a story and help you find the answers to your enquiry question. This section not only helps you present your data and information but explain it; this is called your analysis. The analysis information and activities will be shown in blue text to help you understand when you need to explain and look at your data in more depth.

For the fieldwork data you have collected you will need to use a range of geographical skills to present it, this is great practice and you could use these skills in your assessments.

You have collected 6 sets of primary data and information through your virtual fieldwork activities, these include:

·        Land use survey

·        Residential quality survey

·        Environmental quality survey

·        Leisure activity questionnaire

·        City Centre building survey

·        Photographs

You need to decide how you want to present the data so that you can then describe and explain what the data shows. There are often several ways you can present data and so it's helpful to think about what will be clear and accurate as you will need to explain what it shows. Let us explore some examples of data presentation techniques below. These techniques are taken from the geographical skills in the GCSE specification.

The purpose of doing any analysis is to help us make sense of the facts, this is the evidence (data and information) you have collected. Simply, the analysis means looking at your evidence, interpreting it and explaining what it shows.

When you have presented your data you can look at what it shows, to see if there are any patterns or trends. You can also look for anomalies, this is an value (number) which sits outside the pattern / trend.

The analysis also means that you can:

• 'Drill down' into your evidence - look at in more depth and think about why it's like it is. What have you learnt in geography that can help to explain what you have found out through your data / information? What has influenced the data e.g. who lives there, money invested, local government decisions etc
• Make connections between your data and information e.g. look at your land use and building function data and compare this to historic maps and photographs of Liverpool. You can then start to think about what's changed and why?

You have collected data about how the land is used along a transect line. Your data is recorded by land use category e.g. RICEPOTS.

Activities:

(1)   Add up the total numbers for each category, you could show this in a table.

(2)   Using your table of data, draw a bar graph. Don’t forget you need to include a title and axes labels (e.g. horizontal axis - land use category and vertical axis – number).

(3)   For your graph describe and explain the pattern shown e.g.

·        Interpreting your graph, think about the patterns and trends: What does your graph show as the overall pattern, which categories have the highest or lowest numbers?

·        Which category of land use is the most popular and why do you think this is?

·        Which category of land use is the least popular and why do think this is?

You completed a survey of two streets in Liverpool, where you recorded what you could see against the criteria in a table. This evidence helped you to give each street a residential quality score. You could present this information in a few different ways:

Ideas and activities:

·        Take a selection of photographs along both streets – label them using the criteria from the table. Write a summary underneath explaining the similarities and differences between the two streets, you could do this in a table. Why do you think you have found the similarities and differences? What factors will influence the differences in residential quality? Hint: Think about where the street is, who lives there, who looks after the street.

·        Draw a bar graph to show the two residential quality scores. Add your bar graph to a map image of the area where you collected the data, add arrows to show the two streets. This is called a located bar graph. Add labels or annotations (a detailed label to explain a point) to your graph to explain what the data shows, you can use the categories from your data collection sheet to give examples.

To get a map image, use the ArcGIS map viewer (click on the link below), you can then zoom in to find Liverpool and the streets where you completed your survey. Take a screen shot of the map and label it as explained above.

Hint: Click on the base map gallery (at the top left of the page) and select 'streets', this will help you complete your located bar graphs.

You have carried out between 2 to 4 environmental quality surveys in different areas in Liverpool. To display your data, you could:

Ideas and activities:

• Take each EQS score and label these on the map in the location where you conducted the survey. Explain why you think the scores vary across the areas.

• Present your data as a pictogram. For this you need to write the indicators from the data collection table (e.g. litter, housing, noise, leisure and safety) on the horizonal axis. The vertical axis needs to be from 1-5 for the EQS score. For each score you have given, add a picture to your graph. You need 5 different pictures, one for each of the indicators in the table.

• What does the data in each pictogram tell you about each area? Why are the scores different in the different areas?

For a questionnaire you may well have a mixture of quantitative (data/numbers) and qualitative information (people’s opinions). As this is virtual fieldwork you may well have designed the questionnaire, to practice this technique but you may not have been able to collect any data. If you decided to use the questionnaire in your local area, then you could practice presenting the data using the ideas below.

Ideas and activities:

·        Quantitative data e.g., age of the participants in your questionnaire or the distance they have travelled? You could present this information on a graph (bar) or for the distance travelled you could plot their home area and draw an arrow to the area where the survey was conducted. What does this data tell you about the age of those who participated and how far they travelled? Why is this important?

·        Qualitative information, these questions are often based on what people think. You could compare people's answers and see if there are any common points (which we can call themes). An easy way to do this would be to present a word cloud. Save the text from your questionnaires and post it in excel (explained below) you will get your word cloud which shows any repeating words or phrases in the largest size letters. What are the key themes and why do you think this is? Are you surprised by your findings, if so why?

Click on the blog below which explains how to do a word cloud in excel.

This survey will have generated lots of information about the different services in the city centre of Liverpool.

Ideas and activities:

For each of the categories listed in the table, work out the total number of these for city centre of Liverpool, which was the area you surveyed. This could be presented as a pie chart (percentage of each type of service) or a bar graph (total number of each type of service).

·        What does your data show you about the different types of services available? Which are the most or least popular?

·        Why do you think there are so many of these particular types of services?

·        Why do you think the services want to be in a city centre location?

Photographs are a very helpful record for you of the area you have done your virtual fieldwork. So that they can be of value for your enquiry, it’s important to look at them in some detail. You will need to add labels (say what you see) and annotations (explain what you see).

Use the examples here of labels and annotations to work through a number of your photographs, remember you don’t need to use them all.

Secondary data is information and data already available, which you can find through research.

The reason for collecting secondary data and information is to help you find out more about the place you are studying and you can collect larger amounts of data than you would be able to yourself.

The types of secondary information you collect for Liverpool would be newspaper articles, historic pictures and maps. You could research data on population, migration, deprivation, employment or crime for example. Some of this data has been presented for you in the form of maps, the activities will help you understand the patterns of the data.

The maps you can see below are all produced on ArcGIS, they are interactive (so you can click on them to find out more). They are all examples of choropleth maps which means they use colour shading to show the pattern of data. You can look at the key to find out what the colours represent (show).

You can combine your primary and secondary data in your data presentation and analysis sections, this will help you understand more about your enquiry question so that you can answer it. You need to think of yourself as a detective, looking at all the evidence and trying to work out the answer to your enquiry question.

If you researched and have some historic images of Liverpool, then you could label and annotate these in the same way you have for the primary data presentation. You could present these on a map of Liverpool to show their location as this will help you understand more about how and why the area has changed.

What would be interesting to do is to compare the primary data photographs you took and the historic images – what has changed? Why do you think this is? 

The series of maps below use Geographical Information Systems (GIS) to make some large secondary data sets (groups of data) easier to explore.

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) capture, store, manipulate, analyse, manage and display spatial data.

Activity: Watch the video below which explains more about GIS.

Why Use GIS? – GIS is a tool to help us ask and answer questions about the world, put simply GIS helps us do better geography!

By using GIS, you will be able to access authoritative, secondary data sets on a range of scales, map data more quickly and explore the data behind the map with powerful analysis tools.

GIS has potential uses throughout the geographical enquiry process, from asking questions, designing methods and collecting data, presenting data, analysing data, supporting the drawing of conclusions and evaluating the accuracy, reliability and validity of your work.

Find out more about how you could use GIS to support your geographical enquiry and download the GIS guide here:

Activity: The GIS maps below show you lots of information and data about Liverpool. Explore each map and work through the questions. The maps are interactive (so have a play with them) and the text next to each of them explains what you will see.

In this section you have explored how to present and analyse your primary and secondary data. What you can do to extend your understanding is to make connections between the different pieces of evidence, rather than just analysing one piece of evidence i.e., environmental quality survey.

Which data and information you choose to explore connections will depend on your enquiry question, here is an example:

Enquiry question: How far do the leisure facilities in Liverpool's city centre meet the needs of young people?

There could be four pieces of evidence which could be particularly useful here and these are: land use survey, leisure questionnaire, map of the city and photographs.

• Using your map of the city and the land use survey, can you find out where the leisure facilities are located and see how accessible they could be to young people e.g., how close are they to housing areas, a school and/or public transport? You are starting to make connections between location and access.
• Depending on the questions you asked in your leisure questionnaire, you might have found out which leisure facilities young people use, how far they are prepared to travel and why they like them. You could plot all of this information on a map, therefore you are making visual connections between the location of the activities, the range of leisure activities and how far they are prepared to travel.
• You could plot your photographs on a map and annotate them to show the leisure facilities and bring in any relevant information from your questionnaire which explains who uses them, when and why. You are making visual (photographs) and spatial (map) connections to understand more about the leisure facilities and who they might appeal to.

Look at your enquiry question and the evidence you have collected, pick two pieces of data and / or information - see if you can find any connections between them. How could you display these connections? Hint: Look at the ideas above.

How have the connections between your evidence helped you to understand more about your enquiry question?