Comparison
Description
Definition: Comparison analysis examines relationships between two or more variables to uncover insights about client conditions or data linkages.
Purpose: Highlights disparities, disproportionalities, differences, relationships, or conditions requiring further investigation.
Examples:
- Comparing service rates by gender or ethnicity.
- Analyzing links between poverty levels and case types.
Key Insight: When unexpected differences arise by demographics or legal problem, investigate to understand the data relationships and determine whether advocacy or services targeting multiple conditions are needed.
Example Data Question
What is the average hours per case that we spend on cases that we serve versus those we cannot serve?
Recreate This Analysis
Data Sources
Intake and Closed Case data from your case management system, including:
- Fields that determine whether a client was served or not, such as case status and/or close code
- Fields that show hours worked on cases
- Problem codes
- Open date and close date
- Other case information that you might be able to use in other analyses, demographics, etc.
- Exclude cases that were identified as errors or duplicates, but make sure to keep cases that ended up not being served
Example Analyses Steps
- Export the total cases closed (including served or not served) from your CMS to a spreadsheet for the most recently completed five years.
- Sort the cases by whether they received service or did not receive service (usually based on closed code and/or case status).
- Subtotal the hours worked for served and not served cases for each year and divide the total hours by the total number of served and not served cases to get average hours per case for each year.
- Create a graph within Crystal Reports, Excel, or whichever analysis software you prefer (Excel Column Chart shown in this example) that shows the average hours per case for served and not served cases each year.
- Give served cases a different color from not served cases to make the graph easy to understand.
Related Questions You May Ask
- How do hours worked compare by demographics and/or legal problems?
- Are we spending more time than we should on cases that we close with case status or close codes that indicate we were not able to serve the client? If so, should some of those cases be closed with service?