Llinos Haf Spencer reports on the use of the cluster analysis statistical technique in nursing research and uses data from the Welsh Language Awareness in Healthcare Provision in Wales survey as an exemplar. She concludes that cluster analysis is a valuable tool to tease out patterns in data that are not initially evident in bivariate analyses and thus should be considered as a viable option for nursing research

According to Beckstead (2002), ‘cluster analysis is a generic name for a wide variety of methods or procedures that can be used to create a classification. These procedures empirically form discrete groups or “clusters” of similar entities based on similarities among their measured features. Entities may be individuals, objects, or variables.’