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This chapter discusses ways of analyzing and interpreting data collected for a needs assessment project based on the type of design that is selected. Analysis of qualitative data is also discussed for those who have used focus groups or questionnaires that have employed open-ended questions. Quantitative data analytic strategies include data editing and checking, frequencies and univariate analyses, and examination of variables two at a time. Qualitative data analyses include understanding and interpreting themes and patterns in the data and drawing conclusions. The chapter also highlights some published needs assessment articles which have used quantitative and qualitative analytic approaches.

A panel data econometric analysis of corporate governance change is undertaken utilizing a data set of fifteen nonliberal market economies covering the period 1975–2003. The results of this analysis suggested that the interaction of partisanship and competition is a highly significant determinant of corporate governance change. In particular, significant shifts in a pro‐shareholder direction are associated with Left government – but not conservative government – in the context of high levels of competition. In contrast, neither Left nor conservative government is associated with corporate governance change in a low‐competition environment.

This chapter explores the degree to which an expectations approach can help us make sense of the seemingly contradictory findings of the large-N quantitative research that has dominated the study of interdependence and war over the last two decades. It also lays out a new approach to qualitative historical analysis for rare events research—one that minimizes the problems of selection bias and generalizability by covering the essential universe of cases for a chosen period of time. Additionally, the chapter discusses how qualitative research can help overcome the limitations of quantitative methods in the measuring of leader expectations about the future.

The intensities of the peaks in a powder diffraction pattern are shown to scale with the mass of contributing material. Thus, for a sample comprising several phases, the mass fractions of the different phases can be obtained, at least in principle, from the ratios of intensities of peaks from different phases. Individual peak methods, such as the polymorph method, are described. There is a particularly simple connection between the mass of a phase and the corresponding scale factor as obtained in a multiphase Rietveld method analysis, and this is finding increasing application in quantitative phase analysis. The relative merits of X-rays and neutrons for phase analysis, analysis with or without standards, and the estimation of errors, are discussed. Applications to magnesia-partially stabilised zirconia (Mg-PSZ) and studies of the synthesis in situ of Ti₃SiC₂ are described in detail.

In health and other disciplines there has been some questioning of the quali-quantitative polemic characterizing so much research practice in the last few decades. This chapter aims to suggest that the choices available to researchers for health policy are no longer about big quantitative studies of aggregated datasets versus small-N qualitative ‘narrative’ studies that rely on ‘discourse and persuasion’. It explores how Charles Ragin's writings can be used to better understand context in a hypothetical small-N community health prevention study.

Qualitative spectrum analysis was born in late 1859 through the cooperation of a first-class analytic chemist, Robert W. Bunsen, and a first-class physicist, Gustav R. Kirchhoff, in Heidelberg. Early spectrum maps displaying the fingerprints of the elements, especially alkaline and alkaline earth metals, are reproduced. The discovery of various new elements with this new analytic technique is also covered. The search for homologous spectra and the efforts to decipher the structures in series spectra, band spectra and stellar spectra are dealt with. Johann Jakob Balmer's creative transfer of perspectival Gestalt-vision is analysed in depth on the basis of hitherto unpublished sources from his papers in Basel. Finally, the much less straightforward development of quantitative emission spectroscopy is documented, which only became feasible in the 20th century.

This chapter presents a summary of the latest methodological advances in quantitative and group profile analysis to the text of the Gospels used by Clement, an early Alexandrian father who lived in Egypt at the turn of the third century. The analysis indicates that the text of the Gospels was in a stage of transition at the end of the second century with two major textual streams present: primary Alexandrian and Western. These two textual traditions, including a few ancient Byzantine readings, exerted varying levels of influence upon Clement’s text, resulting in an Alexandrian influence in John and Matthew and a stronger Western influence in Luke and Clement's citations of Mark 10. Although the Gospel text of later Alexandrian fathers would be clearly Alexandrian, Clement's text contains a number of significant textual relationships that indicate some sort of textual affinity existed between Clement and the later Alexandrian fathers.

This chapter examines various procedures for authorship attribution. In particular, it looks at how quantitative analyses based on counts can be used. Such stylometric analyses can serve two main purposes, both of which would otherwise be very difficult to tackle in any systematic way. First, they can build an overall picture of a collection of material from the occurrences of certain features. Second, they can provide concrete evidence to support or refute a hypothesis about the material. Comparative studies based on quantitative and statistical analyses make it possible to determine whether the usage of some feature or set of features is significant and have provided much new evidence in some well-known cases of disputed authorship.

Powder diffraction is complementary to the book's main technique of single-crystal diffraction; it can provide a check on purity and homogeneity of samples, and may be the only possible approach for some materials. The two methods are compared. The main limitation in powder diffraction is the one-dimensional nature of the data. Many variants are possible for the basic powder diffraction experiment: data may be measured in reflection or transmission mode, with monochromatic radiation and angle scanning, or with an energy-dispersive arrangement, and there are different kinds of detector available. Careful corrections for various effects are necessary for high accuracy. A powder diffraction pattern may be used for phase identification, qualitative and quantitative analysis of mixtures, information on grain size, strain, and preferred orientation. Reflection indexing and intensity profile measurement can lead to structure solution and refinement by Rietveld methods. Powder diffraction is well suited to non-ambient studies (temperature and pressure).

Bayesian statistics provides a flexible set of tools for analysis of empirical data. This chapter focuses primarily on how flexible Bayesian tools, especially Bayesian Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms, are particularly amenable to statistical inference of quantitative genetic parameters in the wild. First, this chapter takes a practical tour of a simple quantitative genetic analysis—estimation of a heritability—by setting up quantitative genetic models in the BUGS statistical programming language. No prior familiarity with the particular software is necessary, and following these analyses through should go some way to demystifying some aspects of ‘what goes on under the hood’. This chapter then discusses three ways in which the flexibility of Bayesian tools can be used to make quantitative genetic inferences of complex data from natural populations. These examples in no way provide a comprehensive list of ways that Bayesian methods can contribute to wild quantitative genetics, but together serve to outline a range of the benefits afforded.

This chapter discusses several kinds of quantitative analysis of bonebed assemblages in relation to particular research questions, first reviewing protocols for counting specimens recovered from bonebeds, a crucial initial step that lays the foundation for further analyses. Second, it considers the evaluation of taphonomic equivalence among bonebeds, a consideration that is crucial for comparisons of faunal counts among fossil localities, and third, discusses comparisons of species richness among localities, particularly with respect to sampling intensity. Fourth, the chapter assesses approaches for estimating taxonomic abundance in ancient ecosystems based on species abundances in fossil assemblages. Finally, it looks at several techniques for the quantitative analysis of changes in lineages and faunas among fossil bonebeds, illustrating all of the quantitative methods presented with case studies.

For centuries scholars have studied Irenaeus’s use of the New Testament text, particularly his use of the Gospels. These studies have agreed that the text Irenaeus used was most like that of the Western text type. This first study of Irenaeus’s use of the Gospels in over twenty years retests the findings of this history of scholarship and furthers this study by using quantitative analysis on nearly 350 variants in Irenaeus’ Gospel texts. Each of three Gospels, Matthew, Luke, and John, is individually analyzed and the results are compiled into an overall analysis of the Gospel texts. Conclusions are drawn on the overall text type of the text used by Irenaeus and the likely origin of that text.

Chapter 3 presents a case study that introduces and tests a new measurement approach to interest group influence. The chapter starts by explaining the underlying conceptual approach which draws on the comparison of interest group preferences and policy outputs. The chapter then presents a new measurement approach to policy positions of interest groups which uses quantitative text analysis to analyze consultations of the European Commission. Since this is a novel approach and text analysis has not been used in interest group research so far, the validity of this measurement approach is demonstrated by presenting a case study in which the results obtained by computerized text analysis are compared with traditional hand-coding. In the light of the findings of the case study, conclusions for the applicability of text analysis in interest group influence research in general and for measuring interest group influence in this book in particular are drawn.

This chapter argues that scientific approaches to aesthetics that were popular in Victorian culture constitute a suppressed alternative to New Critical interpretive practices that were foundational in professional literary study. Analyzing the literary critic Vernon Lee’s unusual synthesis of German physiological aesthetics, British aestheticism, and American quantitative textual analysis, the chapter shows how the concept of empathy became at once quantitative and embodied in Lee’s literary theory. In Beauty and Ugliness, Lee and her lover, Clementina Anstruther-Thomson, developed strategies for empirical introspective analysis that were meant to demonstrate the effects of paintings and sculpture on the body. As Lee learned about the stylometric analysis of literature carried out in the United States, she expanded her empirical approach to include counting words and issuing surveys. Although this intersection of quantitative and affective approaches was largely disregarded by I.A. Richards and his progeny, it represents a vital prehistory of current approaches to the quantitative and empirical analysis of culture.

This chapter introduces the reader to developing and state-of-the-art tools for measuring musical expressivity. It summarizes recent quantitative measurement and analysis techniques of three domains of musical expressiveness: body motion, musical sound, and listeners’ continuous response to musical sound. It outlines computational methods to quantitatively assess expressive aspects of the body movements of the performing musicians, to extract expressive information from the musical sound itself, and to examine the perception of expressiveness through self-report continuous response methods. The chapter highlights the critical philosophical implications of making measurements of expressiveness, specifically in distinguishing between the measurement of physical aspects, such as motion and musical characteristics, and experiential aspects—the actual sensation of expressiveness experienced by the perceiver. The key philosophical point that unifies the chapter is that each of these aspects is understood through the world of ideas, definitions, and, most importantly, instruments for measuring physical and psychometric signals.

This chapter applies population-level, quantitative analysis to the development of motifs on figure-painted pottery in ancient Greece. It shows that the frequencies of motifs known to be important from other sources, such as Theseus, are dwarfed by more popular motifs such as Nike. This indicates that cultural importance cannot be inferred from frequency alone. The examples also show that correlations with contemporary events occur in predicted locations in some motifs, as in the example of Boreas, but in the example of Pan, it is shown that, although an historical correlation exists, a larger increase at a later time has been left unexplained. The example of Nike demonstrates that a hitherto unseen peak in popularity shows up clearly when the motifs are viewed as frequencies.

This chapter examines quantitative evidence linking shared economic beliefs to variation in the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) treatment of borrowers. It first discusses the measures of IMF treatment before turning to the (indirect) indicators of policymakers' economic beliefs that are then used to construct the key variable in the analysis: the ideational distance between the IMF and the borrowing country. It also evaluates data related to the generosity, conditionality, and enforcement of nearly 500 IMF programs signed in the 1980s and 1990s. The goal is to determine whether borrowing governments with policymakers who shared beliefs with the IMF received bigger loans, fewer conditions, and easier enforcement of the conditions. The results of quantitative analysis show that there is a pattern of favoritism in a large sample of the Fund programs.