How to analyse and evaluate

From WikiTextbook

If you are going to achieve a top grade it is important that you analyse and evaluate throughout. These notes should give you some help in doing this.

How To Analyse

Analysis involves looking at the effects of your ideas, research or findings. You could try and look at the:

CAUSE IMPACT CONSEQUENCE

Cause	A majority a people who will visit your shop will drive there.	You have a very specific target market.
Impact	If you want to accommodate their needs you will have to provide a car park or recommend an alternative.	There is no point spending money in promoting your good or service to other market segments.
Consequence	This will make it easier for customers to visit your shop. This may increase the level of revenue and profit.	You should only promote in media that your target market will see. This should lower costs and increase profits.

In addition to this way of analysing, you could try the following:

• Consider more than one point of view and then look at alternatives and discuss them.
• Look at the impact of your decisions. This will involve discussing the consequences of your ideas, backed up with specific evidence.
• Explore every point you make in detail. Include the impact, e.g. increases in cost, revenue and profit.

How To Evaluate

It is possible to evaluate the previous examples of analysis:

Cause	A majority a people who will visit your shop will drive there.	You have a very specific target market.
Impact	If you want to accommodate their needs you will have to provide a car park or recommend an alternative.	There is no point spending money in promoting your good or service to other market segments.
Consequence	This will make it easier for customers to visit your shop. This may increase the level of revenue and profit.	You should only promote in media that your target market will see. This should lower costs and increase profits.
Evaluation	Providing a car park will increase the costs of the business which may lead to a reduction in the profits of the business.	As the business only advertises to a very specific market it may lose out on customers who would buy the product as a gift.

All I have done to here is to provide an alternative to the present consequences.

Other ways of evaluating can be:

• Judging which solutions you are putting forward are best, e.g. of the ideas I have put forward I think it would be best to do ……. because……..
• Prioritising points in order of their importance and give reasons why, e.g. I think it is more important to do …… than ……. because ……..
• Rank your ideas in time order (what should be done in the short run and long run) with reasons why, e.g. I think that …….. should be done in the short term because……., but ……... should be left to be done in the long term because …….
• Assessing the extent to which your suggestions will work and explain any assumptions you have made, e.g. your competitors will not lower their prices in response to you opening the business.
• Identifying what information is missing and explain why it might be required/used. You may want to try and explain how you think the extra information would effect your decision, e.g. I would have preferred to have made my decision if I had known……. I could have found this out by…….. If I had this information I think it would have changed my decision in the following ways…….

You might find the following phrases help you to evaluate:

• Therefore …
• On the other hand …
• The effect of this is …
• This is likely to result in …
• This will lead to …
• However …
• The disadvantages / advantages of this are…
• The consequence of this is …
• The likelihood of this happening is …
• The impact of this is …
• Overall …
• On balance …
• In the short-term/long-term …
• The most likely cause is … because …
• The greatest effect this will have on the business is … because …
• The most appropriate solution out of those discussed is … because …
• In these circumstances it is more likely/less likely that … because …
• This may be more/less important when … because …
• If X happens then Y might occur, but if A happens then B might occur.
• Whether this leads to … depends upon …
• Whether this works depends upon …
• The extent of the impact of this issue will depend upon…