Are there any non-technical ‘rules of thumb’ for assessing the quality of analysis?
Better use of analysis and decision making
May 2025
The report below is from a short project that explored a simple set of questions:
Are there ways of spotting poor analysis that don’t rely upon technical knowledge?
Are there ‘rules of thumb’ that could orient decision makers – who typically don’t have analytical expertise - when thinking about the likely reliability of quantitative analysis?
How might decision makers know when a more detailed, and specialist, review of technical work is needed? Can their intuitions be primed?