Analysis of Barriers to Business Support Take-Up in South East vs North West Regions

Compare South East vs North West Region

You have been provided with data from the research project for the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) to understand the barriers to take up and use of business support. As the data set is large, it is saved in different tabs. The tab labelled Variables contains the questions. The tab labelled Values contains the possible options for each question. The remaining tabs contain the data itself.

You have just started employment in the Research department of a University Business School.

1. Compare the South East region with the North West region.
a. Analyse the data provided in order to gain an understanding of the pattern of barriers to take up and use of business support.
b. Highlight interesting findings.

c. Make recommendations about areas which require further support.

2. Present your work to the Chief Research Analyst in the form of a report in Word. Submit your analysis in an Excel file which the Chief Research Analyst can use for further investigation.

· Extract the required data and place it a new Excel file.
· Familiarise yourself with the data by using Excel’s facilities like sorting, filtering, pivot table, etc.
· Pick particular aspects that you want to conduct further, more detailed analysis on.
· Conduct a visual examination of the data by plotting appropriate charts.
· Calculate some standard statistics (e.g., mean, mode, range, standard deviation, etc.).
· Conduct additional analysis that you feel is appropriate to address the tasks

· Demonstrate competence in a range of skills in Excel including charting and use of functions
· Select appropriate techniques to explore and summarise a given dataset
· Highlight and communicate results to the relevant audience

How do I produce high quality work that merits a good grade?
We will be filling this section in together in class on make sure you have downloaded/printed out the Assignment Brief and bring it to the session with you.
Week commencing 6th May 2020
How does assignment relate to what we are doing in scheduled sessions?
Every week we will be using Excel in the workshop sessions to enhance your skills in Excel. We will cover Excel facilities like sorting, filtering, pivot tables, charting, etc. We will also use Excel’s functions such as Sum, Average, Min, Max, etc. In addition, we will practice creating formulae in Excel.

How will my assignment be marked?
Your assignment will be marked according to the threshold expectations and the criteria on the following page.
You can use them to evaluate your own work and consider your grade before you submit.

Recommendations are poor and loosely based on analysis