I am indebted to former and current students for many of the ideas for this web site.
Suppose you face a dilemma about where to begin with your tables and charts. You have been asked to look for significant data. What are significant data? Look for questions where the answers will make the point in your report. Let's say you have written the following question on your survey: "Do you experience regularly scheduled meetings (weekly, monthly, and so forth)?" This question would make a good table of data. You could place columns for the "Yes," "No," and "No opinion" responses and the numbers of managers, assistant managers, and office employees who answered in each case. The numbers could be placed in rows. Your horizontal labels will become the types of respondents, such as managers. Now, you have the beginnings of a table. You took one important question and made it into a table.
One of my students sharply saw what could become a table. He asked a question about number of semesters students attended at a particular institution. He then set up columns for 1-2, 3-4, and 5-6 and so forth for the number of semesters. He created a banner head for Semesters. Then, in the section for Stub Head he placed the paraphrased question. He tallied the number of responses across for each of the semesters. This report writer had the beginnings of an excellent table.
You have to make a selection first about whether you will use a pie, bar, line, surface, or flowchart. Once that decision has been and you have determined the chart's purpose, you are ready to choose a question from your survey or interview guide. You should not choose too much data for the chart presentation.
A student was recently faced with an interview guide. What questions were most important to present what the apartment complex should do to increase tenancy? The student had to examine his problem question as well as his purpose. Eventually, the student decided that the use of media recommended by the tenants and the manager might be the most important information to present. The student could use a horizontal bar chart (bar chart) to present the data with the vertical axis showing the different media and the horizontal axis showing the number of respondents for each kind of media. Here's how the student arrived at all these decisions:
One semester a student did a fascinating report on store tastings for a particular chain store. I did not know anything about store tastings. Apparently, store tastings occur when the employees are asked to sample different beverages or other merchandise before the product is made available to the public. According to the student, a store tasting "provides a time set aside for employees to either sample new products entering the store, or items that have not been sampled before to help increase familiarity about the products." Therefore, the student was interested in presenting data about whether employees engaged in a free for all by taking a free lunch instead of tasting the products. Out of that desire to present grew a pie chart.
As we remember a pie chart, you need to have 100 percent of something. You usually deal with percentages in a pie chart. You try to avoid more than six segments or slices in the pie for readability. The student presented data about attitudes toward the store tastings. The student calculated the percentages of responses for three major categories: (1)Store Tastings Are a Free for All; (2)Store Tastings Are Sometimes a Free for All; and (3)Store Tastings Are Not a Free for All. The student discovered that the largest percentages occurred in the first two categories. Even though the student only had 13 respondents or employees, the percentages made the point quickly. That is what you must do with your chart selected. Make your point quickly.
In the newly revised analytical report memo you are asked to provide an explanation tie-in for the table and figure. You are technically writing part of the Considerations section of the memo. You are doing more than saying the table and chart contain data. Your explanation in paragraph memo form with captions means you tell the significance of the numbers. You talk about percentages and averages. Your work will probably encompass close to a page of single-spaced keyboarding. You don't have to report every single number. However, you do not let the table or chart speak for themselves.
I suspect it would be helpful to see some actual paragraphs from a report and how the student handled part of the Considerations. In the report you are seeing the student surveying elementary school youngsters about their languages used and homework help obtained. You see one of the paragraphs called the explanation tie-in:
Attachment B, Table 1, describes people helping the sample students with their homework. The results show that 12 students (46 percent), the largest number, do not obtain assistance with their homework by any member of their home. They do homework by themselves. Five students (15 percent) are assisted by a third relative (aunt, uncle, or cousin). Three students (12 percent) obtain help from their siblings (brothers, sisters, or both).
In the second illustration we see explanation tie-in for charts, especially a pie chart. The student is trying to find out how to improve training in an investment banking firm. We will call the firm HEI. In the pie chart the student report writer had given the statistics of Strongly familiar (one slice), 23 percent, and Somewhat familiar (another slice or segment), 31 percent. From this pie chart the student wrote the following as part of the Considerations:
Figure 1 (Attachment B) presents a graphic display of the answers given to the HEI operations question. Out of the 13 people surveyed, only seven respondents (54 percent) were able to state they had some familiarity with HEI. The survey further revealed that some employees are not even aware that other key agencies in the settlement process exist.
Think about: Did you spot that 54 percent was arrived at by adding 23 and 31 percents respectively? It is always wise to combine numbers where appropriate in pie and horizontal bar charts. If we looked at the rest of the pie chart, we would see Just get-by, 23 percent, and Don't know, 23 percent. Did you notice the writer did not have to repeat the question to present the data? The report writer simply stated the "HEI operations question" and let the reader refer to the Attachments for more information about the exact wording of the question.
Exercise: Draw the chart you have just read about.
In the analytical report we place, for the most part, the tables and charts in the Attachments. Each table has its own table number and table title written this way:
For charts you should use the Figure number and the Figure title. The figure title must be a talking caption. The figure number and figure title must be centered over the visual. Let's take an example:
What you do in a figure is find some piece of data that stands out. That might be a pie chart, a line chart, or a bar chart. You make that piece of data your title. You avoid saying some of the following phrases:
SURVEY IDENTIFIES PROBLEMS
DATA SHOWS AN INCREASE
CHART SHOWS AN INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITY
These previous, vague titles do not let the reader know what is going on. You need to have your caption "talk" to the reader.
Tables require columnar presentation of data. Often, selecting specific questions or a whole range of interview of questionnaire questions will give you the data for a table. You may even build a quantitative data table from the interviews. You simply conceive the categories and place in the data in some workable fashion with the columns and rows. For example, columns for advantages and disadvantages of some particular plan may be a helpful way to present the qualitative data, categories you conceived from open-ended questions..
Don't forget that every table and figure should have "n=25 or number of respondents" placed in parentheses immediately after the table title. You need to clarify how many people responded. The reader should not be left to guess how many percentages or have to calculate the appropriate statistics.
In class we looked at five different problems and the charts that would satisfy each situation. You are asked to first say whether the chart should be component, item, time series, frequency distribution, or correlation. Use these exact words in explaining the chart. Then, rough out the chart by labeling Y and X axis and a title for each chart. Remember to use different kinds of plot lines for correlation (if appropriate) than for a horizontal bar chart. The exercises now follow:
Last updated Monday, April 20, 1998
(c)G. Jay Christensen, All Rights Reserved
Please check the home page for additional help, including the analytical report memo, memos, talking captions, and presentations.