Broadly, analysis can be visualized in four forms:
(i) Full analysis:
All areas that are not susceptible to empirical research and theory fall under the purview of full analysis;
(ii) Background analysis:
All broader concepts, major constants, covering laws, conceptual frameworks etc. analysed before the actual conducting of inquiry belong to this category;
(iii) Data Analysis:
Data collected during the course of survey, investigation or research is put under this category; and,
(iv) End Analysis.
Levels of Political Analysis:
There can be many levels of analysis ranging from specific aspects of social reality to its hierarchical levels:
(a) Aggregate analysis:
Survey sampling belongs to this category;
(b) Relational or group analysis:
It is concerned with interactional patterns between individuals and groups found as networks of mutual relations. In this analysis, a group characteristic is analysed without any reference to individual properties as in bureaucratisation or professionalisation;
(c) Institutional Analysis:
It attempts to compare relationships within and across the legal, political, cultural and economic institutions of society. Relevant properties, attributes or elements may be compared within institutions;
(d) Ecological Analysis:
It is concerned with large, all-covering and contextual explanations as done in field studies of crime and delinquency;
(e) Cultural Analysis:
It concentrates on the association of norms, values, practices, traditions, ideologies, technical objects and other artifacts of culture; and,
(f) Societal Analysis:
which typically uses societal or sociological gross indicators as done in urbanisation, industrialisation and the like. Sometimes these levels overlap. Analysis can be classified on the basis of number of variables used, and, transformation in the nature of phenomena.
Kinds of Political Analysis:
On the basis of number of variables, it can be:
(i) Univariate,
(2) Two-variable, and,
(3) Multi-variable.
Dynamic or transformation study analysis can (a) trend analysis, or (b) panel studies.