Unit of Analysis

One important idea in a research project is the unit of analysis. The unit of analysis is the major entity that you are analyzing in your study. It is the what or who that is being studied. Units of analysis are essentially the things we examine in order to create summary descriptions of them and explain differences among them. Some studies include more than one unit of analysis. In these instances, the researcher must anticipate what conclusions he or she wishes to make with regard to each unit of analysis. For example, if a researcher is examining what kinds of college students are most successful in their careers, but also wants to examine what kinds of colleges produce the most successful graduate students, he or she is working with two separate units of analysis: individuals (college students) and organizations (colleges). Another unit of analysis that is used in social science research is the formal social organization. For example, if a researcher is studying corporations, the unit of analysis is the organization (corporation). The researcher might characterize the individual corporations in terms of the number of employees, net annual profits, gross assets, the percentage of employees who are racial/ethnic minorities, etc. From here the researcher could look at things such as whether large corporations hire a larger or smaller number of minority employees than small corporations. The first step in deciding how you will analyze the data is to define a unit of analysis (Trochim, 2006).

Your unit of analysis is the who or the what that you are analyzing for your study. Your unit of analysis could be an individual student, a group, or even an entire program.

What Is Quantitative Research? Quantitative research is research that uses numerical analysis. In essence, this approach reduces the data into numbers, such as the percent of teenage mothers in Florida. The researcher knows in advance what he/she is looking for and all aspects of the study are carefully designed before the data is collected. The objective of quantitative research is to develop and employ mathematical models, theories and/or hypotheses pertaining to phenomena. Quantitative research is generally done using scientific methods, which includes the following steps:

Developing models, theories, and hypotheses of what the researcher expects to find. Developing instruments and methods for measuring the data. Experimental control and manipulation of variables. Collecting the data. Modeling and analyzing the data. Evaluating the results.