10 minutes
Numbers, stories, and what each one can carry A count describes the people who were counted, using categories somebody chose. A story shows that something is possible. Both become misleading the moment a document asks them to carry more than that.
What you’ll be able to do Decide what a data summary or a case story can support, and write its limits into the document rather than explaining them in a meeting afterward. Compare the responses to this question and explain your choice: How should the one page be built? Document a next step for Numbers, stories, and what each one can carry: Add two lines to the next summary you write: who is in the count and who is not, and what this number cannot tell the reader. What a number is a record of A count in a division summary is usually treated as a fact about the world. It is closer to a fact about a process. It records the people who reached a point where something got entered, in categories that someone designed for a purpose that may not be yours, filled in by people working quickly with their own understanding of what each field means. A number produced that way can be completely accurate and still answer a different question than the one the document is asking.
Three gaps open up most often. The first is who is missing: people who never applied, never got past a first step, or were recorded under a different program are invisible in the count, and their absence usually points at exactly the barrier the document is meant to find. The second is the category: race, language, disability type and county of residence are all fields with histories, and a field that lets a person choose only one answer reports something different from one that lets them choose several. The third is who entered it, and whether they had any guidance.
None of this is a reason to avoid numbers. It is a reason to write two or three additional lines. Who is in the count. Where the category came from. What this number cannot tell you. Those lines take a minute to write and they change how a reader uses the result, which is the whole point of a summary. Without them, the caution lives in the analyst's head and the confidence lives in the document, and the document is the thing that travels.
Six ways an analysis quietly overstates itself A percentage standing on a small count Two people out of eleven is eighteen percent, and it reads like a rate. Next quarter it may be one out of nine. Report small counts as counts, say how small the group is in the same sentence, and let the reader decide how much weight to put on a movement of one or two people.
A gap reported without asking who is missing A summary of everyone who used a service describes people who got through the door. If the document's question is about reach, the people who never appear in the data are the subject, and their absence needs its own sentence rather than being silently excluded from the denominator.
A category treated as a property of people Fields like primary language, race and disability type record what a form allowed and what someone entered. Say where the category came from and how it is completed. A category is a design decision, and readers need to know that before they build a program on it.
A difference reported without a comparison “Authorization is lower in this region” invites the reader to supply a cause. Lower than what, over what period, and lower for whom? A difference with no basis of comparison is not yet a finding, and it is the sentence most likely to be quoted as one.
A correlation written as a cause Two things moved together in the same period. The summary says one produced the other. If that claim is worth making, it needs its own analysis; if it is not, take the causal verb out. The strongest version is usually the plainest: here is what moved, and here is what we would need to know to say why.
A trend built on a changed definition When a field, a form or an eligibility rule changed partway through the period, a trend line can be entirely an artifact of the change. Any summary crossing such a change needs a line saying so, or it will be quoted as evidence of a program effect that did not happen.
One number, three stops on its way to a decision In the record In the summary In the decision memo
A staff member creating a record selects a primary language from a list. The household speaks two languages; the list allows one. The staff member picks the one used in the conversation that day. Nothing about this is wrong, and the field now holds a simplification nobody will see again. This is where most data limits are created — at entry, quietly, by people doing their jobs under time pressure with the options a form gave them.
An analyst groups the records and reports how many people in each language group used the service. If the summary says what the field is, who fills it in and what it cannot distinguish, the simplification stays visible. If it does not, the number graduates into a fact. This is the last point at which the limit can be attached at no cost, and the point at which it is most often dropped for space.
Someone writing to a decision maker takes the figure and one sentence of context. The field, the entry practice and the group size are gone; the figure remains, usually as a percentage. A program is then sized, targeted or left alone on the basis of a single-answer field completed without guidance. Nobody involved did anything careless. The caution simply was never written down, and only what is written down travels.
Can the number carry this claim? Eleven people in this group used the service during the period.
Choose a category The number can support this The number cannot support this Only with a limit stated in the document Use of the service among this group is eighteen percent lower than average.
Choose a category The number can support this The number cannot support this Only with a limit stated in the document The service is not reaching people who speak this language.
Choose a category The number can support this The number cannot support this Only with a limit stated in the document This community prefers not to use formal services.
Choose a category The number can support this The number cannot support this Only with a limit stated in the document Fewer people in this group used the service than in any other group we counted.
Choose a category The number can support this The number cannot support this Only with a limit stated in the document Records show a change from the previous period in how often the service was authorized.
Choose a category The number can support this The number cannot support this Only with a limit stated in the document The division does not currently know how many people in this group were eligible but never applied.
Choose a category The number can support this The number cannot support this Only with a limit stated in the document The language field records one language per record and is completed without written guidance.
Choose a category The number can support this The number cannot support this Only with a limit stated in the document Check matches Reset We told your staff the same thing three times. It showed up in the report as an anecdote, in quotation marks, next to a chart that said the opposite. If you only wanted a quote to warm up a page, you could have said that at the start, and we would have decided whether to give you one.
Composite culturally specific organization perspective, illustrative Private reflection, kept by you: think of a figure from your own work that gets quoted often. What does it actually count, and what would you want a reader to know before they used it to decide something?
Try a situation Division leadership asks for a one-page summary of how well a service is reaching people who speak a language other than English at home, and asks for “a story that makes it real.” The only relevant data is a single field called primary language, completed by whoever created each record, with no guidance on how to fill it in. Eleven records in the relevant group used the service in the period. A culturally specific organization the division partners with says a family it works with is willing to talk about their experience.
How should the one page be built? Lead with the percentage, and use the family's story underneath it as the human illustration.
Say what the language field is and who fills it in, report the count rather than a percentage of eleven, and carry the family's account only with their agreement, at the level of detail they choose, with the organization compensated for arranging and reviewing it, clearly labeled as one family's experience.
Leave the story out and report the number alone, since the data quality is uncertain and a single family cannot represent a group.
Consider your choice Try another response Carry this forward A number is a record of who was counted, in categories someone chose, entered by someone with their own understanding of the field. All three facts belong in the summary, not in the writer's head.
Small counts behave badly. A shift involving a handful of people produces a dramatic percentage, and a percentage of a small count invites a decision the underlying number cannot support.
A story is evidence that something happened and is possible. It is not evidence of how common something is. Used as a stand-in for a pattern, it makes a claim it cannot support and puts the weight of a program decision on one household.
When a real person's situation becomes an example, dignity is a set of design choices: who agreed, how much detail is genuinely needed, whether the person or organization is compensated, and who gets to check the final wording.
A scenario about a one-page summary requested with a story attached, an accordion of six ways an analysis overstates itself, tabs following one number from the record to the decision memo, sorting practice on what a number can and cannot support, and a knowledge check.
Add two lines to the next summary you write: who is in the count and who is not, and what this number cannot tell the reader.
Browse and download only. Course notes are not typed or saved on this page.
Reset this lesson
Previous lesson Next lesson Carry this into practice A finding, a summary or a briefing note carries three things at once: what happened, how it was framed, and what the framing implies about the people in it.
Return to the experience: What did you notice or try, whose perspective informed it, and what would you keep or adjust?
Participation and course completion in this program do not count toward DHS-required training credits unless management, a director, or DHS leadership expressly approves an exception.
