Defending Dignity A Manual for National Human Rights Institutions on Monitoring Economic, Social and Cultural Rights 8.4.2. Percentage change and percentage point change Percentage change and percentage point change can sometimes be confused in the interpretation of data. For example, if a value changes from 5% to 10% what is the percentage change? A common mistake would be to answer 5%. This is incorrect. The percentage change in question is actually 100%. It is, however, a change in five percentage points. The choice on whether to report percentage change or percentage point change will depend on your question. Often it is useful to report both. 8.5. IN PRACTICE: ANALYSING DATA IN SPREADSHEETS Your research plan should identify which staff members (or partners) will be responsible for analysing the data collected. As discussed above, it is also important to prepare a standardized format for recording primary data. This phase of the work can be experimental and exploratory. Play around with the data, look at it from different perspectives (e.g. by comparing variables, disaggregating it, looking at it over time) to see what is most relevant to your research. It is, however, very important to keep a log of any changes made to the data, especially if different people are working on it. This allows you to keep track of any errors that are made, which makes it easier to go back and correct them. UPDATE FROM AHN Ahn enters the secondary data she has downloaded and starts to interrogate the numbers. Starting with the “outcomes” data, she finds that her country’s maternal mortality rate is the highest in the region and that it has not reduced very much in the past ten years; by comparison, neighboring countries have made significant progress. After disaggregating this data, she sees that indigenous women are three times more likely to die in childbirth than non-indigenous women, which suggests that the Government has failed to progressively realize the right to health, without discrimination. She then looks at “policy efforts” data. The Demographic Health Survey (DHS) data shows that only 30% of poor women in rural areas (who she knows are also predominantly indigenous) receive antenatal care; 39% deliver their babies in healthcare facilities; and 27% receive postnatal care. This is in fact less than compared to the previous DHS data. Her analysis of the Health Systems Report shows similar challenges with the availability and accessibility of maternal healthcare services. She then enters the primary data she collected during her focus group discussions, site visits to hospitals and clinics and key informant interviews in a spreadsheet. She analyses the numbers and finds that the main reasons women do not deliver their babies in health facilities is the cost of transportation (42%), cost of care (30%), and discrimination and mistreatment by healthcare workers (18%). This tells her something about the accessibility, affordability and acceptability of maternal healthcare services for indigenous women. When she analyses the numbers collected through her site visits and key informant interviews, she finds that 68% of facilities had experienced a stockout of essential medicines in the past month; 54% of facilities reported that staff absenteeism was “very problematic”; and that procurement delays were considered the biggest challenge (73%) in relation to funding. 94