A handbook for Exploratory Action Research

 
What do I find? | 
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You can use the following table for this task;
6.3 Interpreting quantitative data
As with qualitative data (6.2 above), quantitative data needs to be interpreted – it doesn’t just ‘speak for itself’. Numbers and 
percentages can give you some information about your question, but they will not fully explain the meaning of what you 
found. For this you need to ask yourself ‘So what?’. In order to answer this question, it is sometimes useful to organise the 
data in visual form, as this can help you understand it better. 
Lorena, for example (her story was presented in Chapter Two), was concerned about her students’ lack of participation
in listening tasks. One of the things she did was to get her students’ views and preferences through a questionnaire.
She organised her students answers in a table (presented below).
Comment
Keywords
Categories
1. Carla: “When we work in pairs, Maria 
teaches me the meaning of certain words. 
She is like a dictionary for me.”
2. Vicente: “Agustin is my best friend, so we 
always try to be in the same group, and 
make jokes. It’s lots of fun. But for pairwork, 
I like studying with the girls. They’re more 
serious.”
3. Agustin: “Groups are noisy and I don't like 
to work with Vicente. He speaks English too 
fast. I prefer to work alone.”
4. Sofia: “Everybody copies my answers in 
groupwork, and they ask me so many 
questions. I like to do the exercises on my 
own, and then compare with another 
student - I find that very useful.”
5. Maria: “I like pairwork and groupwork, 
especially if I can choose who I work with.”
1. What do you think about