This Is A Teenager: Showing The People Behind The Data

My tip this week is to check out This Is A Teenager by Alvin Chang at The Pudding. It’s a visual essay that traces the paths of hundreds of teenagers, starting in 1997, to see how their childhood experiences relate to their life outcomes. You can view it in video form (see below) or as a scrolling visualization HERE. The actual teenagers behind the data* don’t get lost in aggregates represented by bars, lines, and circles. Instead, we see them as individuals whose lives tend to follow the paths of other individuals with similar childhood experiences.

* The data is from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth.

Source: The Pudding

To see past data tips, click HERE.

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.

How To Create More Diverse, Equitable, and Inclusive Data Visualizations

Reposted from February 2022

When we visualize information, we make a series of decisions which affect the way that viewers process the information in our charts, maps, and graphs. Sometimes they don’t feel like decisions at all. We go with the default settings in the application we are using. Or we just do something the way it’s usually done. But a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive approach to presenting and visualizing data requires us to make those decisions more consciously and deliberately. Jonathan Schwabish and Alice Feng of the Urban Institute provide some helpful tips, based on the Urban Institute’s own style guide, which you can apply the next time you present data.

Here is a summarized version of Schwabish and Feng’s article.* And here is my 60-second version of their recommendations:

  • Use people-first language in titles, text, and labels associated with charts, maps, and graphs. For example, use “people with disabilities” rather than “disabled people.” Also the Urban Institute does not refer strictly to skin color. For example, they refer to “Black people” not “Blacks.”

  • Order and present groups purposefully. The first group shown in a table or the first bar in a chart can affect how readers perceive the relationship or hierarchy among groups. For example, if the first group is “Men,” then it may appear that men are the default group against which other groups should be compared. One way to prevent viewers from making certain comparisons is to display groups in side-by-side charts (aka “small multiples” charts) rather than on a single chart. In general, make ordering and grouping decisions to promote certain comparisons and prevent others.

  • Point to missing groups. If certain groups are missing from the data, explain why in text boxes or footnotes. Also add information on groups included in “Other” categories and consider providing a more specific label than “Other” which can have an exclusionary connotation.

  • Do not use color palettes that reinforce gender or racial stereotypes. This one may seem obvious, but it bears repeating. Also, the Urban Institute’s color palette is accessible to people with certain color vision deficiencies, and the contrast between those colors and white and black text meet basic accessibility guidelines.

  • Depict a variety of races and genders when using icons and avoid icons that make inappropriate depictions of people or communities or reinforce stereotypes such as showing traditionally feminine icons to depict nurses or traditionally masculine icons to depict bosses.

  • Find ways to show the people behind the data. Data visualizations are, by definition, abstractions of larger realities. But in the process of abstracting, we may obscure the lived experiences of the real people whom the data represent. Visualizations can remind viewers about the individuals behind the data by, for example, depicting them as individual circles rather than aggregating them in a single bar.

* The full paper has been published as an OSF Preprint and can be accessed here.

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.

The Power of Substraction

“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”

―Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Airman's Odyssey

If you have heard of any data viz guru, it’s probably Edward Tufte. And if you know one thing about Tufte, it’s probably the data-to-ink ratio. The data-to-ink ratio is the amount of ink (or pixels) that convey the data divided by the total ink (or pixels) used in the entire chart. The ratio, according to Tufte, should be as close to one as possible. In other words, most of the ink/pixels should be conveying data, and you should remove as much non-data ink/pixels as possible. Click through Joey Cherdarchuk’s slides below for a great example of what Tufte is talking about.

Source: Darkhorse Analytics

To see past data tips, click HERE.

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.

Presenting Data Fast and Slow

Reposted from May 2022

Sometimes we approach the challenge of sharing data with others as if we were trying to con a pet into taking a pill. We think that our audience is too busy, disinterested, or distracted to focus on the data. So we wrap it in something that attracts their attention and feed it to them as quickly as possible. The problem with this approach is that it may get the data into their brains—momentarily—but it won’t stay there long. See where the pill ends up in this video.

If we want others to LEARN from the data — which involves not only retaining it but also drawing knowledge from it and applying that knowledge in the future — then we need a different approach. Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow can help us.

First a little background on how the brain works, according to the evidence Kahneman presents. For learning to happen, information first must get past System 1 of our brains. This is where fast thinking happens. System 1 is the harried gate keeper, madly processing all of the information that comes in through our senses, pitching most of it, keeping only what is deemed necessary. But making it through the gate is only half the battle. Once in, information confronts System 2. This is the part of the brain that allows for conscious thought or slow thinking. The problem is that System 2 is lazy. Conscious thought is hard, and System 2 is always looking for an excuse to avoid it. However, if System 2 engages with information, the resulting knowledge can find its way to long-term memory and learning happens.

So the challenge when presenting data is to make it past System 1 AND engage System 2. Let’s consider a series of vizes from Harvard Business Review (HBR) that I think meets both parts of this challenge. Yes, it’s an example from the for-profit world, but could easily work with nonprofit data. See snapshot of the first viz in the series below .

How to get data past System 1

Getting data past the System 1 fast-thinking gate keeper is all about grabbing attention. We process images much more quickly than words and numbers, so images are a great foot-in-the-door. The HBR viz does it with bright colors and a cool-looking, somewhat unusual chart. There’s plenty of information out there about how to attract attention, including the use of images with:

  • Stand out colors and textures

  • Human faces (we are wired to focus on them)

  • Novelty (images that are unusual in size, placement, etc.)

Data visualizations can use color as well as images to draw attention. But getting past System 1 is not nearly enough. For learning to happen, the viz also has to engage System 2.

How to engage System 2

System 2 is smart but lazy. So we need to pique its interest. The HBR viz starts with a title that poses a question. When confronted with an interesting question, we may be more likely to stick around for an answer. Then the viz leads you through the answer in a visually engaging way (see interactive version of the viz HERE). These are two great ways to slow down and engage the brain with data. Here’s a list of ways to engage System 2:

  • Ask a question in the title as the HBR viz does—questions beg answers.

  • Make it personal. We may be more likely to engage with data when we have a personal connection with it. This New York Times viz, for example, allows you to enter in your county to see what the barriers to COVID vaccination are in your area.

  • Highlight a surprising finding. Many of us love the counterintuitive and the creative. If you draw attention to something new that the data suggests, you may have a better chance at hooking System 2. For example, this viz from The Economist shows that China emits far less greenhouse gas per person than Western countries at the same stage of economic development. Or check out this viz by Dimiter Toshkov showing that small countries can be big players in development and good governance.

  • Hand draw it. There is some evidence that making information harder to consume, for example by presenting it with harder-to-read fonts, makes the brain slow down and engage in effortful and analytic processing. Although the jury is still out on this, I do find myself more likely to engage in hand-drawn vizes like two of the winners of the World Data Visualization Prize in 2019. Perhaps it’s simply the novelty of hand-drawn charts that engages me. Anyway, it’s something you might consider, and all you need is a pen and paper.

  • Walk them through it. A great way to slow down your viewers is to set the pace by walking them through the data as HBR does in the example. I love how HBR presents what the data might look like if our assumptions were confirmed followed by what it actually looks like.

Sources: Veritasium, Visual Content Space, MIT News, Springer Link,

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.

How To Present Data on Slides

“It’s not the mere presence of data that gives the presenter power,” notes Joel Schwartzberg in his Harvard Business Review article on presenting data, “It’s how that data is presented.” Below is my 60-second review of Schwartzberg’s helpful tips. But before you scroll down, see how much you already know. Take a look at the “Before” slide below and consider what changes you would make to it. Then advance to the “After” slide (by clicking on the right side of the image) to see a revised version that follows Schwartzberg’s guidelines.

  • One point per slide. Have one key takeaway for each slide and write a slide title that reinforces your point rather than something generic like “Performance by Quarter in 2023.”

  • Visually highlight “Aha” zones. Use a bright color to direct attention to a key data point and gray out the rest.

  • Make charts readable from across the room. If you have to say “You probably can’t read this but it shows that . . . “ then it needs revision. Don’t use font sizes smaller than 18 points.

  • Labels are clear and intuitive. Your audience needs to decode your chart in a few seconds. Make sure axis and data labels are understandable.

To see past data tips, click HERE.

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.

Ideas You Should Steal From This Viz (Installment 11)

“Every artist gets asked the question: ‘Where do you get your ideas?’ The honest artist answers, ‘I steal them.’ . . . What a good artist understands is that nothing comes from nowhere. All creative work builds on what came before.” —Austin Kleon in Steal Like An Artist.

Today I offer up another steal-worthy interactive viz that I came across in the Tableau Public Gallery.

Source: Kizley Benedict on Tableau Public

Here’s what I suggest you steal from this viz:

  • Beeswarm Chart. The beeswarm chart at the top allows you to easily compare several countries and to see the overall distribution along the Gender Inequality Index among large and small countries. For more on beeswarm charts, see this tip.

  • Highlight a Country. For users who want to know about a particular country, the dashboard provides a search tool which highlights the selected country.

  • Overall Then Zoom In. After getting a sense of the overall distribution from the beeswarm chart, the user can zoom in and make comparisons among and within regions with the maps along the bottom of the dashboard.

To see past data tips, click HERE.

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.

How To Check Your Data Blind Spots

You’ve heard it before. We see what we want to see. It’s called confirmation bias, and we are all susceptible. Confirmation bias is a big problem to those presenting or consuming data (i.e. all of us.) How can we draw our own and others’ attention to the data that does NOT fit our existing beliefs? How, in other words, can we check our blind spots?

The great thing about your blind spot when it comes to driving is that you know it exists. Your rearview mirrors do not show you an area next to and behind your car. So you learn to check that area in a different way. Experienced drivers do it by rote. Wouldn’t it be great if we also could remember that we have data blind spots and learn to check them automatically?

Here are some ideas for making your blind spots visible. All of them involve doing something before you look at data (in the form of a spreadsheet, table, chart, map, or graph) to help you look at the data with fresh eyes.

  1. Make predictions before looking at data. To prevent seeing only the data that confirm our beliefs, we can make predictions before looking at the data. In Staff Making Meaning from Evaluation Data, Lenka Berkowitz and Elena “Noon” Kuo suggest that, before sharing data with program staff, “have them spend 10 minutes writing down predictions about what the data will say. This exercise helps surface beliefs, assumptions, and biases that may otherwise remain unconscious.” This can involve drawing a predicted trend in the data or jotting down guesstimates of key data points. Then look for differences between your predictions and the actual data and consider:

    • What may have contributed to the differences,

    • What more do you need to know to take action, and 

    • What actions might you consider immediately?

  2. Consider your “null hypothesis” before looking at data. This approach is a variation on strategy number one.  Rather than making a prediction, you pose this question to yourself: If what I expect is NOT true, what might I see? This is analogous to how researchers conduct experiments.  Rather than trying to prove that a hypothesis (e.g. A is affecting B) is correct, researchers aim to collect sufficient evidence to overturn the presumption of no effect, otherwise known as the null hypothesis. It’s sort of like innocent until proven guilty. The idea is to take the opposite view to the one that you hold and then look for evidence to support it. If you can’t find that evidence, then your assumption might be correct. This approach makes you think more critically and perhaps more dispassionately when encountering data.

  3. Set decision criteria before looking at data. “Many people only use data to feel better about decisions they’ve already made,” notes Cassie Kozyrkov in Data-Driven? Think again. To avoid this, you can frame your decision-making in a way that prevents you from moving the goalposts after you’ve seen where the ball landed. Before considering the data, determine your cutoffs for action. For example, you and your colleagues might decide that program participation below 150 in any given month requires investigation and possible action. Let’s say that twelve-month data show participation below 150 in six months. The pre-established cutoff can prevent you from only focusing on the worst months when participation was below 75.

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.

How and Why to Visualize Variability

Every dataset includes variability. The people and things we measure differ from one another in many ways. And visualizing data always involves some decisions about how much of that variability to show. There are tradeoffs:

  1. If you show too much variability, you obscure patterns and trends. To understand anything with data, we usually need to reduce its complexity. We can’t extract meaning from a table full of numbers and letters. So we summarize the data through such activities as grouping people, concepts, and time periods; calculating averages; or organizing individuals or groups in a rank order. This process allows us to detect patterns and trends within the data. Patterns and trends become even more apparent when we visualize the data in the form charts, maps, and graphs by assigning visual cues such as color, size, and shape to groups and values. However, too many colors, sizes, and shapes make discerning the patterns and trends more difficult.

  2. If you show too little variability, you obscure reality*. Overly simplified visualizations do not show just how complex and messy the data actually is. And the viewer may mistake the simplified, summarized version of the data as reality.

You can find a great example of problem #2 in Eli Holder’s article Divisive Dataviz: How Political Data Journalism Divides Our Democracy. He describes the danger of red and blue political maps in the U.S. in this way: “there’s no such thing as a “red state” or a “blue state.” Consider Texas, which is often called a “red” state. In the 2020 presidential election, more Texans voted for Joe Biden (5.26 million) than every other “blue” state, except for California. Even New York, a Democratic stronghold, had roughly 20,000 fewer Biden voters than Texas. . . . While popular election maps accurately reflect the ‘winner-take-all’ dynamic of the electoral college, they create the misimpression that state electorates are monolithic blocks of only-Republicans or only-Democrats.”

And the misimpressions such maps engender have real-world consequences. Holder describes an experiment in which people were shown either dichotomous maps or continuous maps (see examples below). Those shown dichotomous maps were more likely than those shown continuous maps to feel that their state was dominated by one party and thus that their votes mattered less because the election outcome was a foregone conclusion.

So when deciding how many shades of gray or circle sizes to show, consider how much summarization is needed to make patterns and trends perceptible without misleading the viewer with an oversimplified view of the data. Take, for example, these three versions of a map. They each show the same CDC chronic illness survey data with a “diverging color palette” in which blue states ranked high on health indexes; orange states ranked low; and gray states were in the middle. The maps differ in the degree of variability shown. Which map allows you to see corridors of good and bad health without oversimplifying the matter?

*More specifically, the full reality of the data. This 60-second data tip doesn’t get into the nature of reality in general!

To see past data tips, click HERE.

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.

One Dataset, 100 visualizations

Today’s tip is to check out the 1 dataset, 100 visualizations project. It shows 100 different ways to visualize this simple dataset:

 

It’s fun to compare the different charts and see how they provide different perspectives on the data. For example, to visualize this data, many of us would create a stacked bar chart like this one and call it a day.

 

But look at how this chart allows you to better understand each country’s relative position in relation to number of world heritage sites between 2004 and 2022. We can more easily see, for example, that Denmark leapfrogged Norway.

 

These 100 charts make a strong case for visualizing your data in a number of different ways before selecting one which provides the perspective needed.


To see past data tips, click HERE.

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.

Best Data Viz of 2023

Looking for a fun (if somewhat geeky) study/work break? Check out these best-of lists for 2023:

New York Times

Visual Capitalist

538/ABC News

FlowingData

To see past data tips, click HERE.

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.

Top 10 Tips of 2023

Here are the top ten reader favorites in case you missed them . . .

Featured
Tips 160....gif
Free Interactive Viz For You: Giving in the U.S.
Tips 160... (1).png
Nonprofits Need This Dashboard
Tips 160... (1).png
Jitter Your Charts
Tips 61-144 (1).gif
Bar Chart Hack #7: The Lollipop Chart
60-SECOND DATA TIP_4.gif
Bar Chart Hack #6: The Funnel Chart
60-SECOND DATA TIP_4 (2).gif
Bar Chart Hack #5: A Little Fine-Tuning Can Transform A Chart
60-SECOND DATA TIP_3.png
Bar Chart Hack #3: The Combo Chart
60-SECOND DATA TIP_4.png
Ideas You Should Steal From This Viz (Installment 7)
60-SECOND DATA TIP_4.png
Data Viz Resources You Should Know: Data Visualisation Catalogue
60-SECOND DATA TIP_4.gif
How To Activate Board Member Fundraising With Visuals

To see past data tips, click HERE.

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.

Upcoming Data Viz Workshops

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.

Nonprofits Need This Dashboard

Does your nonprofit have participants (or volunteers or clients or human beings of another sort) in various programs? If so, you could benefit from a dashboard like this one (see below). Give it a spin. Select a program at the top to highlight participants in that program in the charts. This dashboard allows for easy comparisons across programs, across statuses (e.g. enrolled, waitlisted, and withdrawn), and across time. Scroll over charts to learn more.

My inspiration for this dashboard came from Eve Thomas at The Data School. Check out Eve’s article, which includes instructions for creating this type of dashboard with Tableau (assuming basic Tableau knowledge.)

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.

Ideas You Should Steal From This Viz (Installment 10)

Here’s another steal-worthy viz to inspire you. There’s so much I like about this data dashboard created by Alessia Musìo on Tableau Public. In the Information is Beautiful Awards submission for this dashboard, Musìo notes: “Simplicity, coherence, and clarity are the words that have guided me in the development of the project.”

Here’s what I especially like and suggest you apply to your own dashboards:

  • User friendly: There’s no need for a user guide for this dashboard. The simple left-hand panel tells you all you need to know: how to navigate to other pages, how to filter the data, and how to interpret the color coding.

  • Limited views of data: There are only two ways of looking at the data contained in the dashboard: in a map which allows you to make comparisons across regions and countries or in a chart showing change over time. And there are limited ways to filter the data. This simplicity makes the dashboard more approachable and instantly usable.

  • Methodology and sources page: For those interested, the methods and sources are presented in an organized way with links.

Take the dashboard out for a spin. Be sure to hover over the circular elements on the single country charts to see comparisons with countries of the same continent.

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.

Data Dashboard Treasure Hunt

Looking for a way to engage your staff, board members, and others in your data dashboard? Want them to understand how to use it and how it can inform their work? Here’s a great idea from MiraCosta College: a dashboard treasure hunt! Each page features one page of the dashboard along with questions that require the user to interact with the dashboard. Correct answers lead the user toward a hidden treasure. Try it for yourself:










Source: Treasure Hunt by MiraCosta College on Tableau Public

To see past data tips, click HERE.

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.

How to Extract Meaning from Survey Data

You just conducted a survey of your clients. participants, board members, visitors, or community members, and chances are you used some Likert Scales in that survey. In other words, you asked respondents to state their level of agreement or disagreement on a symmetric agree-disagree scale. A typical 5-level Likert scale is:

Strongly Disagree - Disagree - Neither Agree nor Disagree - Agree - Strongly Agree

Here’s a FAQ (which is more like a QYSA: Questions You Should Ask) on visualizing Likert Scale data to extract useful information.

Have you collected data just once or multiple times with this survey?

If this is a one-time deal, then I would suggest that you visualize the data using a stacked bar chart. Exactly which type of stacked bar chart depends on what you are trying to understand and show. Check out this Daydreamming With Numbers blog post: 4 ways to visualize Likert Scales. It walks you through various options. If you have collected the data two or more times, read on.

Should I calculate average scores and compare them?

A common way to look at change over time with Likert Scale data is to assign numerical values to each response (e.g. Strongly Disagree: 1, Disagree: 2, Neither Agree nor Disagree: 3, Agree: 4, Strongly Agree: 5) then calculate the average across respondents at two or more points in time and compare them. Some may even use a statistical test (such as a paired sample t-test) to assess whether the averages are “significantly” different. This may seem like an obvious way to deal with the data, but there are problems with it:

  • The distance between 4 and 5 is always the same as the distance between 2 and 3. However, the distance between Agree and Strongly Agree is not necessarily the same as the distance between Disagree and Neither Agree nor Disagree. So we may be distorting respondents’ opinions and emotions by assigning numbers to these response options.

  • Respondents are often reluctant to express strong opinions and thus gravitate to the middle options. Averaging a bunch of middle options (2, 3, and 4) only amplifies the impression that respondents are on the fence.

  • Averages do not give us a sense of the range of responses. The average of these 4 responses (5,1,1,1) is the same as the average of these 4 responses (2,3,2,1). Also averages result in fractional results which can be hard to interpret. Does an increase from 4.32 to 4.71, even if it’s statistically significant, really mean anything in the real world? At best, we can say that the aggregated results changed from somewhere between Agree and Strongly Agree to another place that is a little closer to Strongly Agree.

What are alternatives to calculating averages?

Visualize the spread of responses. If you don’t have too many questions (or can group questions together) some simple side-by-side stacked bar charts might do the trick. See sketch 1 below.

Use the mode or median rather than average.The mode is the number that occurs most often in a data set and may be a good way to describe the data if one response dominated. The median is the middle value when a data set is ordered from least to greatest. If responses tend toward one end of the scale (i.e. are skewed), it may be more reasonable to use the median rather than the average. If you feel that the assumption of equal spacing between response options is legit, then you might stick with the average.

Visualize average, mode, or median using one of the following chart types (see sketches 2-4) to understand and show change over time.

To see past data tips, click HERE.

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.

New and Improved Stacked Bar Chart

Here’s a simple solution to a problem with stacked bar charts. Yes, they allow you to compare the size of different groups as well as the subgroups within each group. But comparing the subgroups is tough because — for all but one of the subgroups — you have to compare the length of the bar segments without a common baseline.

The bar chart below, created with Tableau, solves that problem by adding a filter so that you can see the whole bars by selecting “All” but also see only one or more subgroups so you can easily make comparisons across just those subgroups. In this chart, I’ve also set the sort order so that it’s always in descending order regardless of the filter selections. See info below on how I set the sort order in Tableau.

See how this chart works by interacting with it yourself! Change the selections on the checkboxes.

To sort questions in descending order regardless of the response option chosen, click the dropdown arrow on Question in the rows shelf and select Sort . . .

. . . .Then choose to sort by Field in descending sort order and choose the name of the field that indicates number of respondents.

To see past data tips, click HERE.

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.

Ideas You Should Steal From This Viz (Installment 9)

Source: Source: Yusuke Nakanishi on Tableau Public

Here’s another steal-worthy viz to inspire you. This one is from Yusuke Nakanishi on Tableau Public. Filling the numbers to show the percent is cool, particularly because the chart is about drinking and the numbers appear to be filled like a glass. Nakanishi created the chart in Tableau by making a simple bar chart and then placing a virtual stencil (i.e. numbers with a transparent fill) over the chart. The best place to make this type of stencil is probably Adobe Illustrator. But if you don’t have an Adobe subscription, you can do it for free in Canva. I created this image in Canva as indicated below.

  1. Open Canva and click on “Create a design” in upper right corner of the screen. Select a size (I chose presentation).

  2. Select “Background” on left side of screen and then choose a background.

  3. Select “Elements” on left side of screen and enter' “number frames” in the search window. Number frames look like numbers filled with an illustration of grass and sky. Click on the numbers you want and place and size them on the slide as you wish.

  4. Select “Elements” on left side of screen and enter search terms in the search window to find a photo with one color on the bottom and another color on the top. I entered “oil” and used a photo with oil on the bottom and white on the top.

  5. Drag that image over each number frame until it fills the frame.

  6. Double click on the filled number and resize and move the image until the bottom color fills the number frame to the right height. To determine the height, you can use Canva’s rulers and guides.

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.

Jitter Your Charts

A jittered bar chart shows the individuals that make up the bar. In this example, each circle represents an employee within a given city department. Larger circles represent higher salaries and smaller circles lower salaries. You can scroll over each circle to learn more. It’s another great way to show the individuals within an aggregate. And it’s easy to create in Tableau (just watch this four-minute video) or in Excel (here are instructions).

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.

Is The Chihuahua Syndrome Infecting Your Data?

This “sketchplanation” gives a name to a familiar problem.* Chihuahua is challenging to spell. If humans are entering dog breeds into a database or spreadsheet, chances are there are going to be spelling errors unless they can select from a list of breeds or there is another sort of data validation. It’s hard to extract meaning from data that is inaccurate. “Capitals, spaces, misspellings, hyphens, numbers stored as text, numbers entered as letters (I, O), accents, straight/curly apostrophes, dates out of order, languages, dialects, abbreviations, and more are all routes for misleading your analysis.” So make a plan to clean your dirty data and to keep it clean over time. Also, when visualizing data in programs like Tableau, you can group common misspellings into one new field. In this way, the misspelled entry will be automatically corrected in visualizations that use the new field. Also, Tableau Prep Builder comes with most subscriptions to Tableau and allows for easier data preparation including combining, shaping, and cleaning data for analysis within Tableau.

To see past data tips, click HERE.

*Chihuahua Syndrome” was coined by Edward Tufte.

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.