From Data to Results 99
Jackie’s work was about food choices and its relationship to secondary education
outcomes. Put simply, did what teenagers eat affect how well they went at school?
The problem for Jackie was that the topic is part of a complex network of societal,
economic, and political issues. There was almost an overabundance of data (she was
reinterpreting materials previously collected by others), which had been previously
harnessed in conflicting ways by a range of people and organizations. Many of them
had used it selectively to support points of view that were driven by ideological
goals: for and against providing meals in schools; for and against imposing dietary
guidelines on school canteens; blaming parents for neglect; blaming the state for
intervention, or failure to intervene; and so on. Worse, some of the data collection
had been undertaken for political ends, and so was suspect.
This data had both qualitative and quantitative aspects, but it was the quantitative
aspects that were relevant to Jackie, who was trying to identify whether there were
some biological underpinnings to the problem, and in particular had formed the
view that chronic lack of exercise rather than specific diet was the more identifiable
culprit in poor academic results. However, she had gotten lost in the detail, and had
begun to worry about whether she might get publicly criticized by special interest
groups if her findings were made public.
A more qualitative example is that of a student, Don, who was examining food
imagery in classic novels. He had collected forty or so examples from separate
literary traditions that he felt supported his theme on how ‘meal episodes’ and food
imagery were used to establish the morality (or otherwise) of the characters. For ex-
ample, in some novels the first time the reader discovers that a character is selfish is
when the character doesn’t share food. Don had already written detailed case stud-
ies that supported his argument in the context of several novels, forming Chaps. 3, 4
and 5 of his thesis, following a thorough review of relevant aspects of literary theory
in Chap. 2. He now wanted to use his wider collection of examples to demonstrate
that his argument held generally, but was struggling to assemble the material into a
persuasive form.
Despite the superficial differences, in many respects these students faced much
the same challenges, as I now explain.
From Data to Results
You have a hypothesis; you have been busily gathering data and drawing inferences,
and, informally at least, linking the data to your original goal. Now you have to
take this activity and use it to persuade the reader to agree with your thinking. The
process starts with your data.