16 – Communicating Results
Why Should I Care?
The type of data, and your disciplinary focus, will determine the medium you will use to report the data.
| Tables & Graphs (p. 254) | Used for (examples) |
| Frequency Table | Opinion polls |
| Cross-Tabulation Table | Sociology data, subgroups |
| Scattergram | Correlation |
| Pie Graph | Shares |
| Bar Graph | Shares |
| Line Graph | Historical Trend |
| Social Geography Maps | |
| Coloured Territory Maps | Comparing countries |
| Pin-Point Density Maps | With postal code |
| 3-D Location Maps | Intensity, with pin-point location |
| Flow Charts | |
| Production Flow Charts | Identifying inputs and outputs |
| Demographic Flow Charts | Explaining immigration |
| “Follow the Money” Charts | Fraud Investigation |
| Social Linkages “Maps” | |
| CEO Contacts | Explaining business influence |
| Political Contacts | Explaining political influence |
| Socio-cultural Contacts | Explaining cultural integration/isolation |
| Descriptive Text | |
| Journal Articles and Conferences | Communicating results from latest study |
| Monographs | Centering theory around recent literature |
| News and Blogs | Debate current events to broad audience |
| Documentaries | Documentaries |
| Synthesis Tables | |
| Theory Synthesis | Summarizes the existing theories, approaches, differences and validity. |
| Prior Results Synthesis | Summarizes the prior literature, methods, samples and results. |