9 Tips for Communicating Research Results and Statistical Data

By Jeanette Driscoll
SavvyMarketExtend.com

Recently, I was asked to review a report focusing on the decline in physician membership renewals at a medical association. It became clear the author was struggling to clarify the problem and communicate the results. Using the medical society as an example, here are a few tips, tools, and techniques for communicating research results.

1. Review the background to see if a similar analysis was done previously. Can you just provide an update and save yourself time? Check the data. Do the results differ significantly from what you see now? If they do, check out why, so you don’t find yourself in an uncomfortable position.

2. What’s the issue? Assume your audience has no prior knowledge of your analysis, and start from the beginning. Clearly identify the question or state the problem to be solved. For example: “Membership renewals declined from last year.” Use appropriate graphics, such as a bar chart, to show last year’s numbers compared to this year.

3. Put it in perspective. What were the past trends? What is the overall membership rate? Is current renewal rate worse than the previous three years? You might discover that, despite fewer renewals, new memberships have actually been increasing. Use a line chart to show the history over time for both renewals and new memberships.

4. Dig deeper. Breaking down the membership by training specialties or geographic areas might uncover a sector where more renewals could be generated. Split the data further by category (regular, trainee, associate), degree (MD, DO, PhD, MPH), affiliation (academic, industry, military), or length of membership. Looking at it this way in our example, the non-renewals appeared to be mostly physicians, with less impact on the international members, allied health professionals, and trainees.

5. Use a benchmark. Don’t throw a number out there unless you can relate it to something. Compare the results to a standard (or average) to avoid a possible misjudgment of the situation, and provide more relevance to the data. In this instance, we matched, side by side, the number of non-renewals in each of the segments to their proportion of overall association membership. The high number of physician non-renewals was misleading, since most of the association is comprised of physicians. In terms of proportion, it was the trainee members that were declining the most because of the cost of dues. Use a bar chart or pie chart to show the comparison.

6. Leave out the dead ends. Your analysis will lead you down some paths ending in blind alleys. Don’t bore the reader with that information: just give highlights of the important results. Keep your backup data in an appendix, in case there are questions. What makes the report useful is following every possible trail and being able to succinctly condense the main points you’ve discovered for the report reader.

7. Summarize and synthesize. Draw a conclusion and make recommendations based solely on the data discussed. Do not bring anything new to the analysis. Package findings into a relevant, audience-appealing story everyone can understand. Carefully sift through the data, identify patterns, and provide a cohesive narrative of points that lead to your selected key messages.

8. Don’t rely on PowerPoint graphs. Use restraint, and find another way to visually convey the results in condensed form. For example, provide a map with different color symbols indicating chapter cities where declines in membership are above (red triangles) or below average (blue squares). Or use a win/loss table, showing the winning and losing membership segments.

9. Use a disclaimer. Be aware you might not be seeing the entire picture and incorporate some disclaimer such as “Based on the above analysis”, or “based on the data provided”. This gives you an “out” in case there was some other issue you were not able to uncover.

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About the author: Jeanette Driscoll, MBA, is President of Savvy Market Extend, a consulting firm specializing in analytically-focused marketing communications. Established in 1997, the company provides market research editorial and other data-driven reports, articles and presentations. For more articles on marketing analysis techniques, visit www.SavvyMarketExtend.com or contact her at Driscoll@SavvyMarketExtend.com.

Copyright © Bon Mot Communications LLC 2009

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