Difference between revisions of "Documentation/Writer for Students/Cross Tables"

Revision as of 17:18, 14 January 2014

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OpenOffice Calc is not in the league of a specialised statistics programme like SPSS or its open source alternative PSPP. Nevertheless you can use it for statistical purposes, one of the most popular being Cross Tables. Cross Tables are used to illustrate the (presumed) dependency of one variable upon another.

Example of survey using two categories and percentages

Table 4: This Cross Table shows that women reject violent videos to a greater degree than men

In a fictional survey we asked 12 people, men and women, to tell us on a scale from 1 to 10 how much they abhorred violent videos. We expressed the scale of 1 to 10 in percent. The aim was to see if there was any significant variance between women and men. The raw results are listed in table 5, and the dependency table appears in table 4. Here is how to go about it:

1. Mark the two columns of interest, i.e. “sex” and “extent of rejection” in the raw data table 5, copy them into memory, go to the module Spreadsheet (menu File › New › Spreadsheet) and there insert the contents of computer memory using shortcut Ctrl + v.
2. In your spreadsheet you again mark the two columns and go to menu Data › DataPilot › Start and confirm Current selection.
3. Drag and drop the button “Sex” onto the white area Row Fields and drag and drop the button “Level of rejection …” onto the white area Data Fields.
4. Press Options and choose Average. Confirm OK and again OK.
5. Your new Cross Table makes it appearance on your spreadsheet.
6. Mark it and go to menu Format › Cells and open tab Numbers; here choose Category Numbers with Decimal place of “1” and Leading zero also of “1”; confirm with OK (see illustration 26).
7. Copy your new Cross Table into computer memory.
8. After returning to your text file use menu Edit › Paste Special › Formatted text [RTF] (keyboard shortcut Shift + Ctrl + v) (this will insert the raw numbers of your table instead of an image file of the same, thus allowing you a free hand for further formatting of table within your text file).

Table 5: Results of a fictional survey of men and women as to the degree of their rejection of violent videos in percent

Illustration 25: After having dragged the two buttons “Sex” and “Level of …” into their appropriate fields, go to Options and choose Average

Illustration 26: The number of decimal places is reduced to 1

Example of survey involving yes/no answers

If it had been a Yes/No survey, for example to the question “are you mainly right or left handed?”, as in table 7, then you’d do the following:

1. Copy the two right columns “sex” and “handedness” from the raw data in table 7 into memory and insert them into your spreadsheet.
2. In your spreadsheet again mark these same two columns and go to the menu Data › DataPilot › Start and confirm Current Selection.
3. Drag & Drop the button “Sex” onto the white area Row Fields.
4. Drag & Drop the button “Handedness” onto the white area Column Fields and also onto the white area Data Fields.
5. Under Options choose Count instead of Sum and press More and there choose as Type the option % of row.
6. Copy the resulting Cross Table into computer memory.
7. Back in your text file insert the contents of computer memory using the keyboard shortcut Shift + Ctrl + v and choose the option Formatted text [RTF] (so as to obtain a formatable table)

Table 6: Cross table comparison as to handedness dependent on sex

Table 7: Right- and Left-Handedness and Sex (raw data)

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