Paraphrasing Statistics

Monday, September 18, 2017 Avoiding Plagiarism , Paraphrasing , research , Scholarly Writing 1 comment

One of the toughest academic writing skills is paraphrasing. Students ask me about paraphrasing at every residency, webinar, and course I teach, and for good reason. Paraphrasing is difficult!

Recently, I’ve fielded a few questions from students worried specifically about paraphrasing statistics. Using statistics in your writing is often a smart idea because they can provide specific evidence to support your ideas, but paraphrasing statistics comes with its own challenges. Here are my tips for successfully paraphrasing statistics!

Use Your Own Sentence Structure

Students often ask me (sometimes incredulously) how in the world they can paraphrase a statistic like “57%.” This seems tricky, but it’s actually pretty simple. Paraphrasing is about the combination of your own sentence structure and vocabulary. If paraphrasing was just about using your own vocabulary, you couldn’t use “and” if the original source did, let alone “57%”. However, as long as you use your own sentence structure and avoid using the same unique phrasing as the original source, you can use the statistic without needing to reword it.

For example, take this quote: “In fall 2013, there were 5,522,194 students enrolled in any distance education courses at degree-granting postsecondary institutions.” (NCES, 2016, para. 2)

I could paraphrase it like this: U.S. universities reported that 5,522,194 students were taking online courses (NCES, 2016).

Or, depending on how important the exact statistic of student enrollment is, I could even say something like this: U.S. universities reported over 5 million students were taking online courses (NCES, 2016).

In these paraphrases I use my own sentence structure and vocabulary, but I don’t shy away from the statistics in the original quote.

Present the Statistic in a New Format

You can also try reformatting the statistic. This won’t work in all cases, but take this quote: “Only 1,000 students responded to our survey, but of those respondents, 60 indicated they expect instructors of online courses to communicate frequently throughout the week.” (Ya Ni, 2016, p. 13)

Instead of incorporating this statistic exactly as the quote does, I could rephrase it like this: Ya Ni (2016) found that 6% of students want frequent interaction with online faculty.

This paraphrase rephrases the quote’s statistic as a percentage that’s still accurate, but framed differently than the original. Of course, this approach won’t work for all statistics because sometimes you don’t have enough information to rephrase a statistic or doing so wouldn’t be accurate, so make sure you use this approach judiciously.

Focus on Just the Statistic That’s Relevant

Paraphrasing multiple statistics can seem more daunting, especially when the statistics are throughout an entire sentence like this one: “Of the 40 students surveyed, 11 strongly favored online learning, 20 were neutral, and 9 preferred not to learn online.” (Means, Murphy, & Bakia, 2015, p. 75)

Whenever there are multiple statistics in one sentence, think about which statistic is really important: What main idea or topic are you trying to support with the statistic? It might be possible to focus on just one statistic, ignoring the others that are irrelevant, allowing you to incorporate it into your writing more easily.

For example, if I am writing about students who dislike learning online in my paper, I can focus just on that statistic: Means, Murphy, and Bakia (2015) found that 9 of the 40 students they surveyed dislike online learning.

Partially Quote the Statistic

Finally, if all else fails, you might partially quote the statistic. I usually recommend students try the other approaches outlined above first (more on this paraphrase topic in next week’s post), but there might be times when quoting a statistic ensures your writing is clear and accurate.

Let’s try this out with the following quote: “There is a 5:1 ratio by which learners differ, which means that the slowest student takes 5 times as long to learn as the fastest.” (University of Potomac, 2016, para. 6)

Using this quote, I might incorporate it into my own sentence like this: There can be a wide difference in the time it takes students to learn a concept, as much as “a 5:1 ratio by which learners differ” (University of Potomac, 2016, para. 6).

This partial quote works well because it accurately presents this statistic, but the quote is still integrated into my own sentence.

And that’s it! Try these tips the next time you use statistics in your writing, and let us know how it goes. You can always e-mail or chat live with us, sending us your sentence and asking how you’re doing. We’d be happy to take a look!

Have you seen the other posts in this Paraphrasing blog series? If not, click the links to learn more.

Paraphrasing, an Introduction

Paraphrasing Enhances Learning

Paraphrasing to Avoid Plagiarism

Beth Nastachowski is the Manager of Multimedia Writing Instruction in the Writing Center. She joined the Writing Center in 2010, and enjoys helping students develop their own voice as writers through webinars, residencies, and multimedia resources. She is also Contributing Faculty for Walden's Academic Skills Center (ASC).