Mother and Child Health: Research Methods G.J.Ebrahim Editor Journal of Tropical Pediatrics, Oxford University Press.

Data Collection and Analysis Decide what information is required to answer the research question Source of the Information Method of data collection to be used. Validity and Reliability of the information obtained. Key definitions

Exploratory Data Analysis Identify the Outcome, Explanatory, Confounding and Control variables. Look for patterns in the data for these variables by means of histogram (for skewness, gaps, multiple peaks, outliers); by Box & Whisker plots (box contains half the data points, whiskers data points in 0-25 and percentiles) Carry out transformations of data if indicated Scatterplots for checking relationships between two variables.

Data Analysis Initial descriptive analysis. In Frequency counts look for extreme values; missing values (>20 per cent bring error). Cross tabulation. Main uses are described in the accompanying notes. Most basic analysis is bivariate (relationship between two variables)

Common statistical Tests Relationship between two variables can be assessed by  2 test and correlation coefficient ‘ t ’ test is used for comparing two means (i.e. a categorical explanatory and a numerical outcome variable e.g. sex and age) paired ‘ t ’ test for matched pairs Analysis of variance (ANOVA) is like the ‘t’ test but with more than 2 categories