analysis
Meaning of analysis: A word that always needs a partner, since it names a habit of examination rather than any particular method, sample or test.
Definition of analysis
Analysis is the examination of something complex by separating it into parts, in order to understand its composition, structure or behavior. In health care the word covers laboratory measurement of a sample, the statistical treatment of data gathered from many people, and any process that is taken apart rather than judged as a whole.
How analysis is built
- ana- Prefix · Greek up, back, again
- -lysis Suffix · Greek breakdown, destruction, separation
A medical term is read from its ending backwards: the suffix first, then the prefix, then the root. See all 223 word parts.
How is the word used in the laboratory?
Here it usually names a defined procedure applied to a specific sample, and the qualifier in front of it carries all the information.
| Named analysis | What is examined |
|---|---|
| Urinalysis | A urine sample, for cells, protein, glucose, blood and concentration |
| Blood gas analysis | Oxygen, carbon dioxide and acid balance in a blood sample |
| Semen analysis | Sperm number, movement and shape |
| Genetic analysis | DNA sequence, gene expression or chromosome structure |
| Digital image analysis | Features measured automatically from a scan or a microscope slide |
Each of these is a laboratory test with its own method, reference values and limitations, and none of them is implied by the bare word.
How is it used in research?
In studies the word shifts from a sample to a dataset. Statistical analysis is the planned set of comparisons applied to results once they are collected, and the plan is written before the data arrive so that findings are not selected after the fact. Several named varieties describe how the data are handled: an interim analysis examines results partway through a trial, a subgroup analysis looks at one slice of the participants, and a meta-analysis combines the results of many separate studies into a single estimate. Each carries known pitfalls, and subgroup findings in particular are treated cautiously, since dividing a dataset enough times will eventually produce a difference by chance alone.
Why does the qualifier carry the meaning?
Because analysis on its own says only that something was examined in parts. It states nothing about what was measured, how, with what precision, or against what standard. A record that reports simply that analysis was performed is incomplete in exactly the way a record that reports imaging without saying which scan is incomplete. The convention is therefore always to name the analysis, and to report the method alongside the result whenever the two could be interpreted differently.
Used in a sentence
Semen analysis was ordered as part of the couple's fertility evaluation.
Good to know
The word analysis by itself does not specify a particular method or test, so it is generally paired with a qualifying term, such as blood gas analysis or semen analysis, to indicate exactly what is being examined.
Word origin
Where “analysis” comes from
From Greek analusis, a loosening or breaking up, formed from ana-, meaning throughout, and lyein, meaning to loosen.